In her most recent column, the Marquise de Fontenoy discusses that "King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has come almost as deaf as was his mother, the late Princess Clementine of Coburg." The King was recently in Paris, and, although the Paris newspapers, "maintained a discreet silence about the matter during his recent state visit." But his "hardness of hearing was a subject of much comment among the French people" and with foreign diplomats. It was noted that the king "depended a great deal upon his wife," who remained by his side "so as to keep him properly posted as to what people were saying."
Although Queen Eleonore is "not good looking and over 50, she is a perfectly ideal consort in the assistance she renders in this respect." The Queen "is sensible, quiet, collected, and thinks before she speaks." She is a trained nurse, and she is "endowed with a vast amount of patience and of tact."
She made an "excellent impression" during the visit to France, "despite her German birth and bringing up."
The King has inherited his deafness through his mother, a Princess of Orleans. His late uncle, the Prince de Joinville, "was stone deaf," as was another uncle, the Duke de Nemours. His first cousins, the Dukes of Chartres and de Penthievre, are "hard of hearing.
The late Count of Flanders, father of the present king of the Belgians, was also deaf. His mother was a sister of Princess Clementine. His deafness was so intense that "whenever some particularly important secret affecting royalty, or international politics, reached the public," the leak was always traced back to the Count. He and his "clever wife," the Countess of Flanders, would discuss such topics after dinner, "the windows of the dining room opening directly on to the street," so that anyone walking by, "could not help hearing what the count was saying." The Count, like many deaf men, "spoke in a loud and sonorous voice, while the countess was obliged to talk equally loud in her efforts to make him understood."
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