Betting on the Tsar

Year ago when that gruff old Bulgarian elder statesman Nicholas Muchanoff set out on a secret mission to Rome (TIME, Feb. 4, 1929), the Italian and Greek ministers plenipotentiary at Sofia laid a fat bet.

They wagered 50,000 Greek drachma ($650) on the sovereign to whom they are accredited, Tsar Boris of Bulgaria.

"He won't marry your Princess Giovanna--not within a year anyway!" confident Greek Minister Basil Dendramis chuckled. "The Pope won't give her dispensation to marry him, and even your Duce will not dare to make the match without the Pope."

"They will be married within one year!" said Italian Minister Renato Piacentini and laid his money on his Duce.

To the diplomatic corps at Sofia the bet was puzzling. Signor Piacentini should know best of anyone whether his Government was willing and able to make the match. If he believed the wedding would go through within a year, did he not know it would? Was not the Greek Minister rashly wagering against a sure thing?

Surer still looked the thing a few weeks later when Elder Statesman Nicholas Muchanoff, who might have been expected to make the legal aspects of the match, was followed to Rome by dashing General Ivan Wolkoff, close intimate of Tsar Boris, a cavalier well able to achieve the amorous aspect of a monarch's suit.

In March the little Tsar himself left Sofia incognito--left behind a joyous and expectant people, thousands of whom had put Princess Giovanna's picture in one corner of their windowpanes and Tsar Boris' in the other. Sofia cafes were hastily renamed Konditorei Giovanna. Delighted Bulgarian editors "learned on highest authority" that Pope Pius XI had agreed to the following compromise: all offspring of Roman Catholic Princess Giovanna except her first-born male would be reared as Roman Catholics; but the premier male, as Crown Prince of Bulgaria, would espouse the Eastern Orthodox religion in order to comply with the Bulgarian Constitution, which specifies that the Tsar must belong to the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox church.

Up to a few hours before Tsar Boris was to enter Italy incognito the 50,000 drachma bet seemed as good as won. Suddenly however Cavalier General Ivan Wolkoff left the amorous embers he had been poking up at Rome, rushed to meet and stop Tsar Boris at Vienna. Next day it was announced that a painful ear was the sole reason for the royal migration, and after this had been tinkered by a Viennese otologist His Majesty went, not to Rome, but on a brief, face-saving visit to Prague, Czechoslovakia. While there he did nothing more remarkable than pay a piquant visit to Arms and the Man, a Shavian drama which quite baselessly represents the Bulgarians as a backward, bathless, totally uncultured people. For one night, in honor of the jilted Tsar of the Bulgars, the scene of Arms and the Man was announced to be laid in Albania.

A last slim chance that the bet could be won seemed to loom when Tsar Boris went officially to Rome (TIME, Jan. 13) to attend the wedding of Belgian Roman Catholic Princess Marie Jose to the heir of Italy. An audience was granted to His Majesty by Pope Pius XI. The Holy Father listened perhaps to amorous pleadings and arguments by the world's only Bachelor Tsar. But last week the bet was definitely lost. Ruefully at Sofia, His Excellency the Italian Minister--not a sure- thing better after all--drew his check for 50,000 drachma and sent it round to the Greek Legation.

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