The King's equable temperament has enabled him to take an even higher flight. For let us not forget that it is possible to be lenient, even forgiving, in the face of calumny, and yet to suffer agonies of torture in the task of repressing our wounded feelings. King Charles is said to have read many scurrilous pamphlets and papers directed against him and his dynasty--for singularly atrocious examples have been ready to his hand--and to have been able sometimes even to discover a fund of humour in the more fantastic perversions of truth which they contained. Speaking of one of the most outrageous personal attacks ever perpetrated upon him, he is reported to have said that such things could not touch or affect him--that he stood beyond their reach. Here the words employed by Goethe regarding his deceased friend Schiller might well be applied: Und hinter ihm im wesenlosen Scheine Lag, was uns Alle bändigt: das Gemeine. His absolute indifference towards calumny is doubtless due to his conviction that time will do him justice--that a ruler must take his own course, and that the final estimate is always that of posterity. IV One who for years has lived in close contact with the Roumanian royal family gives the following sympathetic and yet obviously sincere description of the personal impression the King creates: "King Charles had attained his fiftieth year when I saw him for the first time. There is, perhaps, no other stage of life at which a man is so truly his full self as just this particular age. The physical development of a man of fifty is long completed, whereas on the other hand he has not yet suffered any diminution of strength or elasticity. His spiritual individuality is also ripe and complete, in so far as any full, deep nature can ever be said to have completed its development. It is only consonant with that true nobility which precludes every effect borrowed or based on calculation, that the first impression the King makes upon the stranger is not a striking one: he is too distinguished to attract attention; too genuine to create an effect for the eye of the many. An artist might admire the handsome features; but the King lacks the tall figure, the impressive mien which is the attribute of the hero of romance, and which excites the enthusiasm of the crowd. On the other hand, his slender figure of medium height is elegant and well knit; his gait is energetic and graceful. His sea-blue eyes, which lie deep beneath strong black eyebrows--meeting right across his aquiline nose--now and then take a restless roving expression. They are those of an eagle, a trite comparison which has often been made before. Moreover, their keenness and their great reach of sight justifies an affinity with the king of birds."