Ferdinand himself was indeed in a bad way. He had offended Russia beyond all chance of recovery in her good graces. He had lost every trick in the game, and his dreams of being crowned in Constantinople had melted into thin air. In his extremity he turned to his Austrian friends for sympathy. It was characteristic of him that he should go off to Vienna disguised as the Count of Murany. He went for advice and sympathy to his friend Franz Ferdinand. But this astute person refused to see him. Moreover, the semi-official Press of Vienna came out with a demand that Ferdinand should be required to leave the Austrian capital. He was, they said, a dangerous and undesirable visitor. So Ferdinand went quietly back to Sofia, taking with him a sheaf of Press cuttings to prove, at any rate, that the Austrians were no friends of his. There were no national dances to welcome him home. Instead a crowd assembled under the Palace windows and moaned, “Down with the Balkan Nero.” And the students had got a pot of tar and a big brush and scrawled on the Palace walls, in letters two feet long, “TO LET.” The students had reason to be angry with him. He had never really liked the students of Sofia, and when the attack on his Allies was made, he had arranged that a regiment, mainly composed of students and other advanced thinkers, young men of position in Bulgaria, should be placed in a position without support where they were sure to be badly cut up. This had leaked out, and Ferdinand was more unpopular than ever with the youth and intellect of Sofia. “Down with the Balkan Nero,” they cried; and Ferdinand shuddered to hear them. Then it was announced that the King was about to abdicate in favour of Prince Boris. The latter had borne himself gallantly in the war, and was popular, compared to his father. The rumour of his impending resignation made things easier for Ferdinand, and he did not deny that rumour. He posed as a martyr and a victim of Russian intrigue. And the curious part of it is that he got people to believe him, and especially English people. Ferdinand has always been very polite to foreign journalists, and in his hour of need this facile courtesy served him well. By this time few people in this country knew what all the fighting was about, or whether Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria or Rumania was in the wrong about the second Balkan war. What they did know was that the Bulgarians had administered the principal trouncings to the Turk, and had come out of the struggle worse off than when they entered. On broad principles it was considered that Ferdinand had been most unfairly treated. The theory that the Balkan States should be limited by racial conditions has also prevailed in this country, among such people as were interested enough to give the matter a single thought. It is an excellent theory but for the fact that the average Macedonian peasant prefers to belong to the race which has the strongest band of murderers in the neighbourhood.