What led the Prince to use the extraordinary words contained in the last sentence of his telegram can only be conjectured.  The substance of his conversation with the Russian Consul-General is not known; and until the words of that official are fully explained he must be held open to the suspicion of having played on the Prince a diplomatic version of the confidence trick.  Another version, that of M. Elie de Cyon, is that he acted on instructions from the Russian Chancellor, de Giers, who believed that the Czar would relent.  On the contrary, he broke loose, and sent the answer given above[216].

[Footnote 216:  Histoire de l’Entente franco-russe, by Elie de Cyon, p. 158.]

It is not surprising that, after receiving the Czar’s retort, the Prince seemed gloomy and depressed where all around him were full of joy.  At Tirnova and Philippopolis he had the same reception; but an attempt to derail his train on the journey to Sofia showed that the malice of his foes was still unsated.  The absence of the Russian and German Consuls from the State reception accorded to the Prince at the capital on September 3 showed that he had to reckon with the hostility or disapprobation of those Governments; and there was the ominous fact that the Russian agent at Sofia had recently intervened to prevent the punishment of the mutineers and Bishop Clement.  Few, however, were prepared for what followed.  On entering his palace, the Prince called his officers about him and announced that, despairing of overcoming the antipathy of the Czar to him, he must abdicate.  Many of them burst into tears, and one of them cried, “Without your Highness there is no Bulgaria.”

This action, when the Prince seemed at the height of popularity, caused intense astonishment.  The following are the reasons that probably dictated it.  Firstly, he may have felt impelled to redeem the pledges which he too trustfully made to the Czar in his Rustchuk telegram, and of which that potentate took so unchivalrous an advantage.  Secondly, the intervention of Russia to protect the mutineers from their just punishment betokened her intention to foment further plots.  In this intervention, strange to say, she had the support of the German Government, Bismarck using his influence at Berlin persistently against the Prince, in order to avert the danger of war, which once or twice seemed to be imminent between Russia and Germany.

Further, we may note that Austria and the other States had no desire to court an attack from the Eastern Power, on account of a personal affair between the two Alexanders.  Great Britain also was at that time too hampered by domestic and colonial difficulties to be able to do more than offer good wishes.