In starting on his adventurous, not to say perilous, experiment, Prince Charles already possessed plenty of valuable capital to draw upon. In the first place, few princes to whose lot it has fallen to sway the destinies of a nation have received an early training so well adapted to their future vocation, or have been so auspiciously endowed by nature with qualities which in this instance may fairly be said to have been directly inherited from his parents. His early and most impressionable years had been passed in the bosom of an ideally happy and plain-living family, and this in itself was one of the strongest of guarantees for harmonious development and for future happiness in life. Both his father and mother had earnestly striven to instil into their children the difference between the outward aspect and the true inwardness of things--the very essence of training for princes no less than for those of humbler rank. Also we find the following significant reference to the Prince and his feelings on the threshold of his career: "The stiff and antiquated 'Junker' spirit which in those days was so prevalent in Prussia and Berlin, and more particularly at the Prussian Court, was most repugnant to him. His nature was too simple, too genuine, for him to take kindly to this hollow assumption, this clinging to old-fashioned empty formula. His training had been too truly aristocratic for him not to be deeply imbued with simplicity and spontaneity in all his impulses. His instincts taught him to value the inwardness of things above their outward appearance." Nor was it long before he had ample opportunity of putting these precepts into practice. Neither as Prince nor as King has the Sovereign of Roumania ever permitted prosecution for personal attacks upon himself. The crime of _lèse majesté_ has no existence--or, to say the least, is in permanent abeyance--in Roumania. Anti-dynastic newspapers have for years persisted in their attacks upon the King, his policy, and his person--sometimes in the most audacious manner. Although his Ministers have from time to time strenuously urged his Majesty to authorise the prosecution of these offenders, he has never consented to this course. He even refused to prosecute those who attacked his consort, holding that the Queen is part of himself, and, like himself, must be above taking notice of insults, and must bear the penalty of being misunderstood, or even calumniated, and trust confidently to the unerring justice of time for vindication.