other hand he has not yet suffered any diminution of strength or elasticity. His spiritual individuality is also ripe and complete, in so far as any full, deep nature can ever be said to have completed its development. It is only consonant with that true nobility which precludes every effect borrowed or based on calculation, that the first impression the King makes upon the stranger is not a striking one: he is too distinguished to attract attention; too genuine to create an effect for the eye of the many. An artist might admire the handsome features; but the King lacks the tall figure, the impressive mien which is the attribute of the hero of romance, and which excites the enthusiasm of the crowd. On the other hand, his slender figure of medium height is elegant and well knit; his gait is energetic and graceful. His sea-blue eyes, which lie deep beneath strong black eyebrows—meeting right across his aquiline nose—now and then take a restless roving expression. They are those of an eagle, a trite comparison which has often been made before. Moreover, their keenness and their great reach of sight justifies an affinity with the king of birds."

It is not generally known—but it is true, nevertheless—that the King of Roumania is half French by descent. His grandmother on his father's side was a Princess Murat, and his maternal grandmother, as already mentioned, was a French lady well known to history as Stéphanie Beauharnais, the adopted daughter of the first Napoleon, and later, by her marriage, Princess Stéphanie of Baden. It is to this combination in his ancestry that people have been wont to ascribe some of the marked characteristics of the King. His personal appearance—notably the fine clear-cut profile—undoubtedly recalls the typical features of the old French nobility. Also the slight, symmetrical, and graceful figure is rather French Beauharnais than German Hohenzollern. His gift for repartee—l'esprit du moment, as it is so aptly styled—is decidedly French; and perhaps not less so his sanguine temperament, which has stood him in such good stead, and encouraged him not to lose heart in the midst of his greatest troubles, particularly years ago, when his subjects did not know and value him as they do now. An abnormal capacity for work and an absolute indifference towards every form of material enjoyment—or gratification of the senses—have also singularly fitted him for what posterity will probably deem to have been King Charles's most striking vocation: that of the politician. And his success as a politician is all the more remarkable, since his youthful training as well as his early tastes were almost exclusively those of the Prussian soldier. He even lacked the study of law and bureaucratic administration, which are commonly held to be the necessary groundwork of a political career. Yet not an atom of German dreaminess is to be detected in him; nor aught of roughness: little of the insensible hardness of iron; but rather something of the fine temper of steel—the elasticity of a well-forged blade—which, though it will show the slightest breath of damp, and bend at times, yet flies back rigid to the straight line. Thus I am assured is King Charles as a politician—not to be swayed or tampered with by influences of any kind, the sober moderation of an independent judgment has, in fact, never deserted him. It is also owing to a felicitous temperament that he has always been able to encounter opposition—even bitter enmity—without feeling its effect in a way common to average mankind.

He had to begin by acquiring the difficult art of "taking people," and this—as the King himself admits—he only acquired gradually. However, he possessed an inborn genius for the business of ruler. By nature he is a practical realist whose insatiable appetite for facts, faits politiques, crowds out most other interests. So he quickly profited by experience, which, added to an independence of judgment which he always possessed, has made him an opportunist whose opportunity always means the welfare of his country. In dealing with public questions he endeavours to start with the Gladstonian open mind: i.e., by having no fixed opinion of his own. He listens to all—forms his own opinion in doing so—and invariably finishes by impressing and influencing others. He even indirectly manipulates public opinion by constantly seeing and conversing with a vast number of people. For in Roumania there is no class favouritism so far as access to the monarch is concerned. Anybody may be presented at Court, and on any Sunday afternoon all are at liberty to call and see the King even without the formality of an audience paper to fix an appointment.

Personal favouritism has never existed under him. In fact, so thoroughly has he realised and carried into practice what he considers to be his duty of personal impartiality, that he once vouchsafed the following justification of an apparent harshness: that a ruler must take up one and drop another as the interests of the country require. In other words, he must not allow personal feeling to sway him—whereas in private life he should never forsake a friend. And yet withal King Charles is anxiously intent upon avoiding personal responsibility—not from timidity, but from an idea that it is irreconcilable with the dignity of a constitutional king to put himself forward in this way. Thus not "Le Roi le veut," but rather "I hold it to be in the public interest that such and such a thing should be done" is his habitual form of speech in council with his Ministers.

One of the King's favourite aphorisms is singularly suggestive in our talkative age: "It is not so much by what a prince does as by what he says that he makes enemies!" Like all men of true genius—or what the Germans call "geniale Naturen"—King Charles is of simple, unaffected nature;[3] without a taint of the histrionic in his composition, yet gifted with great reserve force of self-repression, and rare powers of discernment and well-balanced judgment.

With all the pride of a Hohenzoller, a sentiment which he never relinquishes, and which, indeed, is a constant spur to regulate his conduct by a high standard, he yet holds that nobody should let a servant do for him what he can do for himself. Also, he has ever felt an unaffected liking for people of humble station who lead useful lives, and have raised themselves honestly by their own merit. In fact, the man who works—however lowly his sphere of life—is nearer to his sympathies than one whose position gives him an excuse for laziness. He instinctively dislikes the "loafer," whatever his birth. He admits as little that exalted position is an excuse for a useless life as that it should be put forward to excuse deviation from the principles of traditional morality. And in this respect his own life, which has been singularly marked by what the German language terms "Sittenreinheit," "purity of morals," offers an impressive justification for his intolerance upon this one particular point.

V

It is said to be King Charles's earnest conviction that the maxims he has striven to put into practice are the only possible ones upon which a monarchy on a democratic basis can hope to exist in our time. But here he is obviously attempting to award to principle what, in this instance at least, must be largely due to the intuitive gifts of an extraordinary personality. Maxims are all very well so far as