Ludwig’s spite against a single member of the House of Hohenzollern destroyed the good relations with his relatives in Berlin. By way of off-set, the sympathy he felt for the Empress Elizabeth had the effect of causing his relations with the House of Hapsburg to be very friendly.

His betrothal to his cousin, Sophie Charlotte, had left behind it bitter memories. Although it was he who had dissolved the connection, and although she would hardly have been capable of making him happy, it is a fact that he became the slave of melancholy after the engagement was broken off. The Duchess had much to forgive him; and yet it appeared to the sick King, who condemned himself to loneliness, that it was he who was the injured party. In one of the rooms which he usually occupied hung the portrait of a woman, over which he had caused a thick silken veil to be hung. He would stand sunk in thought before this picture, walking slowly when he turned away, as if it cost him an effort to leave it. No outside personage was ever permitted to see it, and no one knew whom it represented. It was supposed that it might be a portrait of Marie Antoinette of France, for whom he cherished a great admiration; but many also thought that the painting represented the Duchesse d’AlenÇon, whom he had never forgotten.

Nearly the whole of the royal house had taken the side of his former fiancÉe, and were with reason annoyed at his fickleness. In spite of the wrong which had been done the ducal house, one of Sophie’s brothers and one of her sisters had been indulgent towards him. Duke Karl Teodor, the oculist, had scrutinised his cousin with the eye of a doctor; he had found excuses for his action in his diseased mental condition. Elizabeth of Austria had understanding even of aspects of his character which could not possibly have been sympathetic to her, and she was attracted by qualities in him which had displeased and alarmed her sister.

It is difficult to say whether it was Sophie’s likeness to Elizabeth which had awakened his feelings for the Duchess, or whether a half-unconscious longing for his former betrothed knit the tie firmer between the Empress and himself. It is remarkable, in any case, that the King, who was otherwise so reserved towards women, should have formed a lasting friendship with her. The outward likeness between the two sisters was very great; the inward harmony, however, was not in the same proportion. Despite her beauty and her carefully developed talents, Sophie was an ordinary woman, whereas Elizabeth’s mind was rich, though her soul was crushed. Hardly judged by many, understood by few, and yet admired by most, she was the woman, if anybody could have done so, to have fitted into the King of Bavaria’s life. Both had the same restlessness in their blood, at the same time as they had both a need for solitude. The “horror of the crowd” which dominated him in so great a degree was also a characteristic of her. They were burdened with the same morbid tendencies. Even in their exterior there was similarity between the two cousins, who were gifted with such unusual and spiritual beauty. Neither of them had known the joys of youth; the sceptre had been placed in their hands while they were yet undeveloped children. The power which too early both had become possessed of had in both developed an unwillingness to sacrifice a tittle of their convenience. Ludwig never opened the door to the deep and unusual qualities of his personality; Elizabeth, too, kept her inmost thoughts in conscious shade. However eagerly the crowd might seek, among the hum of reports which were ever afloat, it never knew for certain what it was that inwardly moved them. But they found mutual healing in opening their hearts to one another on the unfulfilled wishes and hidden disappointments which the world did not see.

Their inherited nervous sufferings were the sorrow-laden undercurrent of their lives. Insanity which was inherent in their race was to both of them a threatening spectre, which, sooner or later, would attack them too. But in the case of Ludwig this fear had in a greater degree than in the case of Elizabeth weakened the power of will. Proud almost to the verge of megalomania, they were, nevertheless, friendly towards the country people they met with. By nature they were exceedingly generous; but the sufferings of their neighbour did not, either in him or her, drive away their thoughts from themselves. Both Ludwig and Elizabeth were eccentric in their sympathies and antipathies. Elizabeth was unhappy in her marriage; she sought a panacea for love in friendships with women. Ludwig could suddenly, and apparently without reason, take up with men who were far inferior to him in character. Both, as a rule, were disappointed in, and quickly tired of, these favourites for a day. Both the King and the Empress fled to the world of books, and when they met their literary interests bound them still faster together. A result of their mutual affection was that they exercised influence one upon the other. Elizabeth was older and had more knowledge of the world; she did not exceed her cousin in intelligence, though she may have done so in energy. Her power over him was, therefore, greater than his over her. The Empress’s influence was not altogether for good. She impressed upon Ludwig that “one can do everything one likes,” and the young Wittelsbach was very receptive to this kind of teaching. Where it might have been good and useful, he was, on the contrary, less willing to follow her advice: the Empress went early to bed, rose every morning at five, and went out of doors. The King spent his nights in music and reading, and not till day began to break did he retire to rest. Both had been passionately fond of riding, but had been obliged to give up this sport. She went instead walks of many miles, whereas he took his daily constitutional in a closed carriage.

Elizabeth spent part of her summers in Feldafing, in the vicinity of Ludwig’s castles. They met one another by appointment on the Roseninsel, in the lake of Starnberg; or, as not seldom happened, she would suddenly appear in his study at Schloss Berg or Neuschwanstein, and remain sitting many hours with him. She brought with her a stream of beauty and harmony into his quiet apartments. Even in his last darkened hours, when otherwise he received nobody, he liked to have her visits.

Prince Leopold of Bavaria had married in 1873 her eldest daughter. Ludwig had on this occasion emerged from his customary retirement. Princess Gisela was one of his few women relations who could boast of his amiability. Flattering as this might be, it was at times exceedingly inconvenient; for the King, who turned night into day, sent her presents and bouquets of flowers in the night. He would not alter his habits either for her or her mother’s sake.

The Empress’s youngest daughter, Marie Valerie, expressed the wish to make her “uncle’s” acquaintance, and Elizabeth was at some pains to induce him to receive her favourite child. But he would not be disturbed in his quiet. “I don’t know why the Empress is always telling me about her Valerie,” he said to one of those near him. “Valerie wants to see me, she says; but I don’t at all want to see her Valerie.”