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54
SERBO-BULGARIAN TREATY [chap. vi.
hastened to assure His Majesty, by reason of information
received from Belgrade, that the Serbians truly desired
to arrive at the most complete agreement with Bulgaria.
The second time I went into the subject much more
thoroughly with the King. This was on the 6th (19th)
December, the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor.
It was customary on that day for the King to accept an
invitation to luncheon at the Russian Legation, and in
the evening for him to give a State dinner followed
by a grand receptio^ at the Royal Castle. After
the luncheon, having held little formal conversations
with every one in sturn, the King came into my
study and we talked together for some time. In the
course of conversation the King, for the first time,
mentioned certain fears he entertained concerning the
actual fact of the Serbo-Bulgarian negotiations. His
Majesty expressed the rather justifiable thought that if
the substance of these conferences came to be known by
Vienna and Berlin, the Central Powers might bring
forward the whole Balkan question and raise difficulties
which primarily would not suit St. Petersburg. "That
is why," said the King in conclusion, "one cannot
possibly be too prudent either in the negotiations
themselves, or as to the ends which these negotiations are to
attain." This time Ferdinand seemed to me to be sincere ;
doubts and fears were always much more frankly
expressed by him than any other sentiments or motives
of his complex mind. Up to a point I shared the opinion
of the august speaker. The Serbo-Bulgarian
conferences, in this respect, did most certainly present
certain dangers. Of course, the chief reason of
Ferdinand’s fears lay in his desire not to break definitely
with Vienna; but at the same time, he sincerely dreaded
the risk of war, and he fully realised that this risk
existed as the result of a Serbo-Bulgarian alliance, based
solely on the partition of Macedonia. Bearing in mind
the words of the Emperor, and constantly remembering
my last conversation with Sazonoff in which he had
expressed his conviction that the chief aim of Russian
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