Pet Birds and 
Royalty. 
(33) 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
Pet Birds and Royalty. 
By PRINCESS HELENE VACARESCO. 
Modern royalty loves animals, while it seems 
that royalty of bygone years had rarely anything 
to do with them. Dogs, horses, monkeys, 
squirrels, are among 'the favourites of kings, 
queens, princesses, and grand-duchesses; while 
the archduchesses of the imperial family of 
Austria have a great liking for tame deer and 
wild roes. Birds are more rarely spoken of in 
the annals of court life, though they sometimes 
play a conspicuous part in the intimate existence 
of the wives and children of present potentates. 
For instance, the young Princess Victoria 
Louisa of Germany, only daughter of the 
Emperor of Germany, possesses a pet robin red¬ 
breast, whose cage never leaves the Princess’s 
room. The bird is tame and recognises the 
voice of his august little mistress, and is tended 
by her alone. 
A Pet Humming Bird. 
Queen Elena of Italy had made a present to 
her daughter, Princess Yolanada, of a tiny 
colibri (humming bird), which soon became 
the darling of the whole nursery, and whose 
every movement afforded the young children of 
the Italian crown the most vivid pleasure. But 
soon the beloved bird began to pine, and looked 
so ill that the Queen was called to give her 
advice in the trying matter. Alas! the court 
veterinary himself proved helpless, and the 
colibri died. The late Empress of Germany, 
Kaiserinn Augusta, wife of the first German 
Emperor, delighted in the society of birds, and 
spent hours watching them as they sang or 
moved about the big cage in which she had 
assembled them by hundreds. 
An Empress's Favourite Book. 
So great was her passion for birds that she 
ever declared the best book she had ever read 
was the famous volume (in French) by Michelet, 
called VOiseau (“The Bird”), which is perhaps 
the most lovely poem ever written to the glori¬ 
fication of birds. This book the Empress never 
travelled without. But of all the living mon- 
archs who have to do with the feathered tribe 
the Queen of Roumania is the most devoted to 
their welfare and most attentive to their habits. 
A Royal Reader of Character. 
From her early childhood the future Queen 
and poetess became attached to every little bird 
that came into her way, and she often relates 
with a smile that one of the reasons for which 
she immediately acknowledged the suit of the 
King, then Prince of Hohenzollern, was that she 
discovered he greatly resembled a young eagle. 
In all her friends the Queen of Roumania likes 
to discover some likeness to a bird, and judges 
their character accordingly. “ You are exactly 
like a bullfinch, my dear child,” said she one 
day to a young maid of honour; “you must be 
gay, strong, and greedy,” and the circumstances 
showed the Queen had not been mistaken in 
her appreciation of the girl’s moods and habits. 
Parrots and birds decked with gaudy plumage 
are especially attractive to Carmen Sylva, yet 
she possessed a tame sparrow and admired his 
simple coat, while she wept because a blind 
nightingale was brought to her, and called him 
“ my dear little Homer.” The nightingale had 
learnt to watch for the Queen’s entrance into 
a room, and knew the rustling of her heavy 
train, never making a mistake between Her 
Majesty and any other lady. 
A Prelate's Parrots. 
The head of the Roumanian church, a 
wealthy and clever metropolite, possessed quite 
a collection of beautiful parrots, whose lively 
prattle and admirable colours struck the Queen 
on a visit she paid to his Holiness. She had 
forgotten all about the parrots when, at the 
metropolite’s death, great was her astonish¬ 
ment to hear the birds had been entrusted to her 
care by the will of the .deceased. At first the 
Queen felt aghast at the prospect, but she had 
not the courage to refuse the birds, and soon 
the palace at Sinaia, the Queen’s summer resi¬ 
dence, was full of the clamour caused by thirty 
parrots. 
The King declared the sound obnoxious, and 
made long tours to avoid the verandah where 
the parrots conversed together, so they had to 
be removed to a more remote corner, but still 
the deafening din reached all the inmates of 
the big castle; but as everyone noticed the 
Queen disliked any reference to the nuisance, the 
birds had to be put up with, and they delighted 
all the children who visited the royal palace, 
which shows, said the Queen, how useful they 
can prove. 
A Melancholy Macaw. 
One of the Queen’s greatest pets, a loveLy 
Brazilian parrot, who remained obstinately 
speechless for several years, though he 
had spoken very well while in his native coun¬ 
try, proved a great disappointment to Carmen 
Sylva. She called him “ the unhappy beauty,” 
and spent hours trying to get a sign of affection 
or recognition from the haughty and peerless 
bird. But a soul of undaunted hatred dwelt in 
the charming form of the Brazilian parrot. He 
pined after the forests of the New World, after 
liberty and sunlight, and, like Rachel, he would 
not be consoled. With a kind of frenzy he tried 
to bite whenever an indiscreet finger advanced 
through the grate of his gilded cage, and he 
turned his back on every visitor the Queen 
brought to admire him. Thus the Prince of 
Wales (now King Edward the Seventh), the 
Archduke Carl Ludwig of Austria, the Empress 
