no one can have the pretention to be King." Four days later Schuyler reported that: "The step has been accepted, if not thoroughly approved, by the members of the foreign reigning families, some of whom took part in the act." As an example, he cited Mihail Sturdza being welcomed into the Order of the Star of Romania by Carol. From May 1883, Beizadea Grigore served in Dimitrie Ghica's commission for constitutional revision. In January 1882, Grigore Sturdza was being labeled a "Slavophile" by the Austrian press, which reported on his "conventicles" of Iași in connection with a visit by Miroslav Hubmajer, known for having fought in an anti-Austrian rebellion in 1875. The Beizadea remained unrelenting in his critique of Brătianu's foreign policies, exposing Austria-Hungary for using the Danube Commission to limit Romania's navigation rights. His speeches drew attention from a Junimist poet-journalist, Mihai Eminescu. In an 1882 piece, he declared his admiration for Sturdza's "so very clear, so very beautiful" Romanian oratory, stripped of neologisms and verbosity. Eminescu mused that the effect of using "good, direct, informal Romanian", or what he termed the "old language", was like introducing pagans to Christian music by Palestrina. In the elections in October 1888, Sturdza took a senatorial seat in Iași's 1st College, having run on the joint list presented by the PNL and the Radical Party. Upon confirmation, he embodied the right-wing opposition to Conservative governments. Allegedly, by 1887 he had joined the group of politicians who supported the project of Bulgarian–Romanian unification, and "toasted to its accomplishment with one of our great dignitaries of State." In his November 1888 speech before the Senate, he declared that the merger of Conservative and Junimists had produced first an experimental cabinet under Theodor Rosetti, and afterwards a non-representative one under General Manu. He also argued that Romania would be better off in an alliance with Russia and the French Republic against the German Empire (see Franco-Russian Alliance), insisting that Germany and its Triple Alliance were fundamentally weak. In May of the following year, he attacked Brătianu and General Brialmont's plan for fortifying Romania's plain cities, noting that the only naturally defensible stronghold was at Focșani. He also contended that Romania was helpless in front of a Russian invasion, advising government to declare neutrality and grant safe passage to the Russian armies. Between 1891 and 1895, under a new Catargiu cabinet, Sturdza and his followers, collectively