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48 RUSSIAN-BULGARIAN RELATIONS [chap. iv.
Prince to his godfather the Emperor. My suggestions
were favourable received, and Prince Boris was invited
to Kieff, where the Imperial Family passed the month of
August, and from there he was to accompany them to
Tsarskoe-Selo. The young Prince, who was seventeen
years of age, had never been to Russia and did not
know his august godfather.
In a conversation which I had had before leaving
St. Petersburg with M. Sazonoff, he had confessed to
me that he would very much like to marry one of the
Grand-Duchesses, daughters of the Emperor, to the
Crown-Prince of Rumania, and another to Prince Boris.
Only, as he wisely added, it would be necessary to be
extremely cautious, as he had not mentioned the matter
at Tsarskoe-Selo, and he knew that the Emperor and
Empress would never consent to arrange marriages for
their daughters which might be contrary to the feelings
and inclinations of the young Grand-Duchesses
themselves.
Moreover, from a political point of view, anything
was preferable to a marriage missed by a refusal
from our side: these humiliations are never forgiven.
I agreed entirely with M. Sazonoff. Therefore one can
imagine how disagreeably surprised I was on my arrival
in Sofia to hear my assistants talking quite openly and
unconstrainedly about the future—and apparently settled
—marriage of Prince Boris with one of the Emperor’s
daughters, the only point still unsettled being whether
he was to marry the Grand-Duchess Olga or the
Grand-Duchess Tatiana! The First Secretary to the Legation,
a young man with a great deal of assurance and a very
loud voice, even went so far as to mention it in my
presence, at the salon of one of my foreign colleagues. I
immediately silenced my young and impetuous assistant
by asking him if he had received these confidences from
the Emperor himself, who had not deigned to honour
me with the same trust. The lesson was absolutely
imperative, but it drew down on me the irreconcilable
enmity of the gentleman in question.
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