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1912] IN DISFAVOUR WITH FERDINAND 85
them. If a Balkan war ensued, then either the Porte
would immediately accept all the Italian conditions and
the Italo-Turkish war, which was beginning to drag on
too long, would end very advantageously for Italy; or
some new path would be discovered, some new
com-binazione arise which Italy could profit by. By virtue
of these considerations of an essentially practical nature,
Lieutenant-Colonel Merrone was allowed to watch very
closely the patriotic inclinations of his Bulgarian
comrades-in-arms.
One must be fair to Merrone : he fulfilled this mission
with great cleverness and perfect tact, and fully deserved
the reward bestowed on him after the conclusion of the
Peace Treaty between Italy and Turkey, when he was
made aide-de-camp to the King, but allowed all the same
to keep his command in the regiment—a distinction very
rarely conferred in the Italian army.
I have already mentioned in the preceding chapter
that King Ferdinand had received unfavourably the
explanations which I gave him before my departure for
St. Petersburg in regard to my view of the scope of the
Serbo-Bulgarian agreement. A few of my dear colleagues
at the Russian Legation profited by my absence to
endeavour to exasperate Ferdinand still more against
me, by all the means in their power—some of them very
unscrupulous ones—and to show him that it was possible
to get rid of the Russian Minister who had ceased to
please him. The King jumped at these suggestions,
and shortly after my departure for St. Petersburg he
had already fixed his choice on twro candidates for my
post. One was the former Chief of the Chancellery in
the Foreign Office, M. A. Savinsky, who had just been
appointed Minister to Stockholm, and who had twice
been recommended for the post in Sofia by M. Sazonoff’s
predecessor, as well as by the Grand-Duchess Vladimir
—Ferdinand’s chief patroness at the Russian Court.
The other candidate was General Mossoloff, formerly
an officer in the Horse Guards, who in his youth was
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