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62 SERBO-BULGARIAN TREATY [chap. vi.
the gout—and always kept on putting off my audience.
I learnt at last from a fairly authentic source that the
King’s illness was a diplomatic one, and that for special
reasons known to himself alone, he did not wish to see
me at the moment or to have the necessary politcal
interview with me. Thus forewarned I thought it
imperative to insist on my audience, by declaring that I
should not go on leave till I had seen the King. Two
days after 1 was invited to the Palace.
His Majesty received me in his study; he was half
lying on a wide leather sofa; one of his legs was
wrapped in a plaid rug, testifying to the attack of gout.
On a table next the sofa a few art treasures wrere littered
about: an antique Byzantine crucifix in carved wood
set in silver—the gift, if I am not wrong, of the
Metropolitan of Moscow; an old snuff-box in gold—the gift of
the Empress Alexandra; a box with artistic miniatures—
a souvenir of the Emperor Nicolas II. In his hand, white,
dimpled and well cared-for, the King held a crutch-stick
with a gold knob in the old Russian style, similar to
that with which John the Terrible was always armed;
only the steel point which ended the stick of the Tsar
of all the Russias and which the bloodthirsty autocrat
sometimes dug into the foot of an undesirable questioner
by leaning his whole weight on the knob, was replaced
on that of the Tsar of the Bulgarians—for the greater
wellbeing of his visitors—by a common rubber end;
the crutch had been given to the King by his cousin the
Grand-Duchess Vladimir.
"You see before you, Monsieur," began the King,
"a poor invalid surrounded by a few of his treasures,
valuable by reason of their associations. Here is my
sole consolation in my sufferings," he continued,
pointing to the old crucifix, " here, . . ." and the King began to
show me the artistic treasures which consoled him on
his bed of sickness, and to tell me about their Russian
origin. This preamble over, Ferdinand came down to
facts.
He began by expressing his very vivid fears on the
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