a polyglot and a student of history. He enlisted at the city's university, where he became one of Iorga's star students and fervent followers. According to sociologist Mircea Ioanid, "he made himself famous with his modest but fruitful activities in the public sphere, but most of all through his cultural pioneering". A graduate of the Faculty of Letters, Stahl invented a method for Romanian stenography, which was based on Duployan shorthand. He outlined its rules in a 1900 textbook: Metoda pentru a stenografia cu alfabetul latin pentru uzul studenților, ziariștilor și tuturor celor care au de scris repede ("A Method for Stenography in the Latin Alphabet, Useful to Students, Journalists and All Those Who Have to Write Fast"). By then, Stahl had been employed as a reviewer-stenographer by the Parliament of Romania. Around 1900, Stahl was in France, where he published a guide to the Duployan method and a stenotype how-to: La machine à écrire—machine à stenographier. He fell deeply in love with a Blanche-Alexandrine Francis Boeuve, who taught at her mother's school in Bucharest. She was three years his senior, had worked as a seamstress, and had French Jewish origins. From a previous relationship, Blanche had a six-year-old son, Gaston. The affair angered Irma Stahl, who sacked Blanche after she let known that she carried Stahl's child. Moving in with her sister in Saint-Avold, Lorraine, she gave birth to a daughter, Henriette. The forceful separation and Henriette's health problems as an infant led Stahl to contemplate suicide; Irma Stahl eventually yielded to his threats, allowing mother and daughter to return and live with her in Bucharest. Henri legally married Blanche in 1901. The couple soon had another son, Henri H. Stahl. Blanche became an expert in touch typing, and, after her move to Romania, wrote several textbooks of her own. By then, Henri was experimenting with political and humorous writing. In 1901, he became a contributor to Ion Luca Caragiale's satirical sheet, Moftul Român. He was an imitator of Caragiale, and, according to Iorga, was one of the best, fitted with a "tender understanding of things". Having acquired a first-hand understanding of the emerging Romanian trends in public speaking, Stahl also published a September 1906 notice on the "style of Romanian orators" in the Blaj review Revista Politică și Literară. Oral historian and science fiction author In 1903, Stahl was working for the Chancellery of the Romanian Senate and