Stéphanie, to King Pedro V. of Portugal, in the autumn of 1857, was followed by her marriage by proxy at Berlin on April 29, 1858, whilst another important family event occurred in November of the same year. William, Prince of Prussia (afterwards King William I., who had assumed the regency during the illness of his brother the King, Frederick William IV.), appointed Prince Charles Anthony, of Hohenzollern, to the Presidency of the Prussian Ministry. His son Charles developed the greatest interest in politics, and at that time unconsciously acquired a fund of diplomatic knowledge and experience which was to stand him in good stead in his future career.

In the midst of the gaieties of Berlin the Prince was deeply affected by the melancholy news of the death of his sister Stéphanie on July 17, 1859. Two years later the marriage of his brother Leopold to the Infanta Antoinette of Portugal afforded him a welcome opportunity of visiting the last resting-place of his dearly loved sister near Lisbon. On his return from his journey, Prince Charles requested to be transferred to an Hussar Regiment, as the artillery did not appear at that time to take that place in public estimation to which it was entitled. This application, however, was postponed until his return from a long tour through the South of France, Algiers, Gibraltar, Spain, and Paris. After a short stay at the University of Bonn, Prince Charles again resumed military duty as First Lieutenant in the Second Dragoon Guards stationed at Berlin, where he speedily regained the position he had formerly held in the society of the capital. The Royal Family, especially the Crown Prince, welcomed their South German relative most warmly, and the friendship thus created was subsequently more than equal to the test of time and separation.

A second visit to the Imperial Court of France in 1863, this time at the invitation of Napoleon III., was intended by the latter to culminate in a betrothal to a Princess of his House, but the project fell through, as the proposed conditions did not find favour with the King of Prussia. Prince Charles was forced to content himself with the consolation offered by King William, that he would soon forget the fair lady amidst the scenes of war (in Denmark). As orderly officer to his friend the Crown Prince of Prussia, Prince Charles took part in the siege and assault of the Düppel entrenchments, the capture of Fridericia, and the invasion of Jütland. The experience he gained of war and camp-life during this period was of inestimable benefit to the young soldier, who was afterwards called upon to achieve the independence of Roumania on the battlefields of Bulgaria.

The war of 1864 having come to an end, Prince Charles returned to the somewhat dreary monotony of garrison life in Berlin. This not unnaturally soon gave rise to a feeling of ennui and a consequent longing on his part for more absorbing work than that of mere subordinate military routine. Nothing then indicated, however, that in a short time he would step from such comparative obscurity to the wide field of European politics by the acceptance of a hazardous, though pre-eminently honourable, position of the utmost importance in Eastern Europe—the throne of the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which, thanks to his untiring exertions and devotion to duty, are now known as the Kingdom of Roumania.

III

In starting on his adventurous, not to say perilous, experiment, Prince Charles already possessed plenty of valuable capital to draw upon. In the first place, few princes to whose lot it has fallen to sway the destinies of a nation have received an early training so well adapted to their future vocation, or have been so auspiciously endowed by nature with qualities which in this instance may fairly be said to have been directly inherited from his parents. His early and most impressionable years had been passed in the bosom of an ideally happy and plain-living family, and this in itself was one of the strongest of guarantees for harmonious development and for future happiness in life. Both his father and mother had earnestly striven to instil into their children the difference between the outward aspect and the true inwardness of things—the very essence of training for princes no less than for those of humbler rank. Also we find the following significant reference to the Prince and his feelings on the threshold of his career:

"The stiff and antiquated 'Junker' spirit which in those days was so prevalent in Prussia and Berlin, and more particularly at the Prussian Court, was most repugnant to him. His nature was too simple, too genuine, for him to take kindly to this hollow assumption, this clinging to old-fashioned empty formula. His training had been too truly aristocratic for him not to be deeply imbued with simplicity and spontaneity in all his impulses. His instincts taught him to value the inwardness of things above their outward appearance."

Nor was it long before he had ample opportunity of putting these precepts into practice. Neither as Prince nor as King has the Sovereign of Roumania ever permitted prosecution for personal attacks upon himself. The crime of lèse majesté has no existence—or, to say the least, is in permanent abeyance—in Roumania.

Anti-dynastic newspapers have for years persisted in their attacks upon the King, his policy, and his person—sometimes in the most audacious manner. Although his Ministers have from time to time strenuously urged his Majesty to authorise the prosecution of these offenders, he has never consented to this course. He even refused to prosecute those who attacked his consort, holding that the Queen is part of himself, and, like himself, must be above taking notice of insults, and must bear the penalty of being misunderstood, or even calumniated, and trust confidently to the unerring justice of time for vindication.

The King's equable temperament has enabled him to take an even higher flight. For let us not forget that it is possible to be lenient, even forgiving, in the face of calumny, and yet to suffer agonies of torture in the task of repressing our wounded feelings. King Charles is said to have read many scurrilous pamphlets and papers directed against him and his dynasty—for singularly atrocious examples have been ready to his hand—and to have been able sometimes even to discover a fund of humour in the more fantastic perversions of truth which they contained.

Speaking of one of the most outrageous personal attacks ever perpetrated upon him, he is reported to have said that such things could not touch or affect him—that he stood beyond their reach. Here the words employed by Goethe regarding his deceased friend Schiller might well be applied:

His absolute indifference towards calumny is doubtless due to his conviction that time will do him justice—that a ruler must take his own course, and that the final estimate is always that of posterity.

IV

One who for years has lived in close contact with the Roumanian royal family gives the following sympathetic and yet obviously sincere description of the personal impression the King creates:

"King Charles had attained his fiftieth year when I saw him for the first time. There is, perhaps, no other stage of life at which a man is so truly his full self as just this particular age. The physical development of a man of fifty is long completed, whereas on the