“Who is that evil-looking Dago?” asked an Australian friend; “he looks as though he had never been outside a horse in his life.”

We were gazing at the procession of royalties who followed the body of King Edward VII through his mourning capital. The Dago in question was Ferdinand, Czar of the Bulgarians; and one could not but recognize the truth of the Colonial’s brutal description.

He wore, it may be remembered, an Astrakan cap and coat; and the day was a warm one. His fat figure swayed from side to side in the saddle, and he looked thoroughly frightened of the magnificent horse he bestrode with so ill a grace. The perspiration dropped down his flabby cheeks.

He was not in the sort of company where he was calculated to shine. All around him were princes who would not be seen speaking to him. The London crowd hardly knew who he was, and betrayed less interest in him than it would have shown in the latest coloured monarch from the wilds of Africa.

His bright, shifty eyes turned here and there, vainly seeking something friendly and familiar. No doubt but Ferdinand made a poor showing on his last visit to London; the very last, possibly, that he will ever be allowed to pay to the capital of the British Empire.

But I ventured at the time to predict to my friend from the Antipodes that he would one day hear a good deal more of Czar Ferdinand than he had hitherto learned. For though he was then an unconsidered personage in English-speaking countries, he already enjoyed quite another reputation upon the Continent of Europe.

I explained that he was half a Frenchman, and that in Paris, where notabilities are summed up more surely than anywhere else in the wide world, he was esteemed by no means a negligible quantity.

Berlin, I said, had already put him down as a man with a price, and was only seeking to find how great was the price that must be paid. Austria—the new Austria, as represented by the clever heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand—still looked askance at him, but was determined to make him a friend before he should have returned to amity with Russia.

Russia had against his name the big black cross that is never obliterated in the secret archives of the White Empire, if the gossips of the Chancelleries are to be believed. Finally, in the Balkan States, still the slums of Europe by force of circumstances, he was the man to whom politicians looked for the next move.

I little guessed what world-shaking consequences were to derive from that move. But I was able to say enough to my friend to awaken in him a new interest in the man whom his sturdy Colonialism led him to describe as an “evil-looking Dago.”

Since then I have seen Ferdinand in varying circumstances, all of which have tended to increase my interest in him, without in any way adding to the sum of my liking for him, and all that he represents.

I can see him now, riding into Sofia in triumph, with a wreath of green leaves around his head, and a band of victorious Bulgarian warriors as his escort. It was the first time Sofia had ever really acclaimed him, and he looked almost human as he acknowledged the ringing plaudits of a people that was wont to turn away its face as he rode by.

I remember him, too, in Paris; at Longchamps the day of the Grand Prix. The elaborate precautions made that day by the police to prevent any of those untoward incidents of which he has lived in dread for a quarter of a century spoiled the whole day for the Parisians. It was impossible to move about the lawn without encountering cordons of gendarmes, placed there to afford a wide breathing space for the imitation Czar.

I also saw him at Carlsbad, very much at home among the Austrians, who are really the people of his choice. He maintained a monstrous state there, and his comings and goings were as good as any spectacle I have seen.

And always, wherever I encountered him, I heard stories. They were not nice stories, for he was the hero of them. But they represented the Continental opinion that he was distinctly a man of consequence; a man who would one day bulk big in the world’s history.

All these stories threw a bright light on the character of the supposed useless fop, who made Bismarck reverse his first contemptuous estimate of him. The final judgment of the old cynic was that Ferdinand was “a sharp young fellow.” They confounded entirely the British view of him, which has recently had to be revised.

For it is only too true that our attitude was that of the Rugby schoolboy. “We have heard of the Kaiser; and the Czar and the French President are our good friends. But who on earth is King Ferdinand of Bulgaria?”

The answer is plain to be read. He is the parvenu of princes, the outcast among Kings, the Czar of Shoddy. His history and habits, his ambitions and abilities, his amusements and amours, as far as I have been able to trace them, are set out in the following chronicle.