ical exigencies.

Whether he was good-looking or a monkey in face and figure mattered not.
Health, good character, uprightness didn't count.

Has he expectations for gaining a throne? Will he be wise enough to
retain that throne? What kind of an establishment will he be able to set
up? How long may his parents live, hanging on to the family
fortune?--These were the only considerations deemed worthy of
discussion.

Three or four of the archduchesses seemed to be acting as marriage
brokers for Ferdinand, just elected hereditary prince of Bulgaria, whose
mother, Princess Clementine, a daughter of the dethroned King Louis
Philippe of France, was reputed to be rolling in gold.

Leopold irreverently called Ferdinand's partisans "_Fillons_" after
famous "_La Fillon_," who supplied the harem of our jolly ancestor, the
Regent of France, Duke of Orleans, and he insisted that Ferdinand was a
_Cohen_, not a Coburg. As a matter of fact, Ferdinand's great fortune is
derived from a Kohary, which is Hungarian for Cohen. The original Kohary
was a cattle-dealer, who supplied the armies of the Allies during the
Napoleonic wars. In this way he accumulated so much wealth that an
impoverished Coburg prince fell in love with his daughter and made her
his wife, after she exchanged the name of Rebecca for Antonie and the
Mosaic faith for that of Rome.

Young and proud and flippant as I was, Leopold's talk filled me with
hearty contempt for the "Coburger" long before we were introduced. And
as to his ambassador, who was forever dancing attendance upon me, I
hated him. Yet the Imperial "_Fillons_" kept up their clatter, and one
fine morning Prince Ferdinand was announced.

He wasn't half bad looking, but struck me as too much of a mother's-boy.
Princess Clementine seemed to decide everything for him. Anyhow, I
wouldn't have him and he marched off again.

I next reviewed, as another Balkan matrimonial possibility, Prince
Danilo of Montenegro, a small, thin person, looking like a Jew
counter-jumper in holiday dress--Vienna "store-clothes."

Danilo spoke the worst _table d'hote_ French I ever heard in my life,
and I told mother I would rather marry a rich banker than this crowned
idiot. For once she agreed with me and said his father was only a
"mutton-thief," anyhow.

Finally there was talk of King Alexander of Servia, six years younger
than I. Queen Natalie, who a few days ago celebrated one of her several
reunions with ex-King Milan, s