The accession of Ferdinand as a prince was first opposed, and afterwards recognized; finally he adopted the title of Tsar. He might have said like Fouquet: "Quo non ascendam?" Everything succeeded with him. Soon he became so self-confident that he was actually seen on horseback. I can truthfully affirm this, as I chose one of his favourite mounts; this especial one came from our stables in Hungary, and was a tall, steady and strong-backed bay mare. Ferdinand was a big powerful man, who needed a stolid-tempered animal that would not shy at guns, cheering, or military music. I tried the mare myself on the Prater in the presence of the prince's envoy. We had really found the very thing for Ferdinand, but I would have been more than sorry to have had it myself as it was altogether too dull, no noise startled it; and it was sent to Sofia, where Ferdinand showed off, mounted on this fine animal, on which he probably dreamt of entering Constantinople. His war against the Turks is not forgotten. He thought himself already at the gates of Byzantium.... But I do not wish to relate what everyone knows. I prefer to show in a new light the secret drama which his diabolical contempt for God and the moral laws of Christian civilization provoked, when he baptized and brought up his sons in the "orthodox" religion whence Bolshevism originated--just as the European war has sprung from Lutherism, and just as the more terrible trials of England will arise from her religious disputes. Ferdinand of Bulgaria, born in the Catholic faith, first married Marie Louise of Parma, daughter of the Duke of Parma, the faithful servant of the Roman and Apostolic faith. This marriage, celebrated when he was Prince of Bulgaria, had not been agreed upon without the express condition that the children should be baptized and brought up in the religion of their mother and their ancestors. This constituted a formal article of the contract. Ferdinand solemnly consented to it. But when he thought that the support of Russia might be useful to him in his plans regarding Constantinople, he did not hesitate to break his vows; he gave his two sons to Russian schism. Marie Louise of Parma, mother of the souls of her children, betrayed, repulsed and broken in her belief in her husband, immediately fled from the Konak of Sofia, and came to Vienna to hide her sorrow and her fear in the sympathetic arms of her mother-in-law, who was equally tortured by the blasphemy of her son. People who have some ideas on the question of conscience, especially when it touches religious convictions, will easily understand the intensity of this drama.