Has he expectations for gaining a throne? Will he be wise enough to retain that throne? What kind of an establishment will he be able to set up? How long may his parents live, hanging on to the family fortune?--These were the only considerations deemed worthy of discussion. Three or four of the archduchesses seemed to be acting as marriage brokers for Ferdinand, just elected hereditary prince of Bulgaria, whose mother, Princess Clementine, a daughter of the dethroned King Louis Philippe of France, was reputed to be rolling in gold. Leopold irreverently called Ferdinand's partisans "_Fillons_" after famous "_La Fillon_," who supplied the harem of our jolly ancestor, the Regent of France, Duke of Orleans, and he insisted that Ferdinand was a _Cohen_, not a Coburg. As a matter of fact, Ferdinand's great fortune is derived from a Kohary, which is Hungarian for Cohen. The original Kohary was a cattle-dealer, who supplied the armies of the Allies during the Napoleonic wars. In this way he accumulated so much wealth that an impoverished Coburg prince fell in love with his daughter and made her his wife, after she exchanged the name of Rebecca for Antonie and the Mosaic faith for that of Rome. Young and proud and flippant as I was, Leopold's talk filled me with hearty contempt for the "Coburger" long before we were introduced. And as to his ambassador, who was forever dancing attendance upon me, I hated him. Yet the Imperial "_Fillons_" kept up their clatter, and one fine morning Prince Ferdinand was announced. He wasn't half bad looking, but struck me as too much of a mother's-boy. Princess Clementine seemed to decide everything for him. Anyhow, I wouldn't have him and he marched off again. I next reviewed, as another Balkan matrimonial possibility, Prince Danilo of Montenegro, a small, thin person, looking like a Jew counter-jumper in holiday dress--Vienna "store-clothes." Danilo spoke the worst _table d'hote_ French I ever heard in my life, and I told mother I would rather marry a rich banker than this crowned idiot. For once she agreed with me and said his father was only a "mutton-thief," anyhow. Finally there was talk of King Alexander of Servia, six years younger than I. Queen Natalie, who a few days ago celebrated one of her several reunions with ex-King Milan, spoke feelingly of her "Sasha" to mother, lauding him as the best of sons and the most promising of sovereigns, but the oft-divorced Majesty was less communicative when mother asked how many millions she would pass over to Alexander on his marriage day. That settled "Sasha's" ambitions as far as my hand was concerned. Marry a Balkan King and the _nee_ Keshko holding the purse-strings! Not for my father's daughter! I didn't want to marry into a Russian Colonel's family, anyhow. I believe Queen Natalie's father was a colonel, or was he only a lieutenant-colonel?