At four in the morning Ludwig left Neuschwanstein.

In the first carriage sat Dr MÜller and two keepers. In the second was the King, quite alone. By the side of the coachman sat the head keeper from the madhouse at Munich, and close at the rear of the carriage rode a man who had orders sharply to watch his Majesty, and give a sign at the slightest suspicious movement. Dr Gudden, a police officer, and several keepers followed afterwards. When Ludwig had taken his seat in his equipage he said to the doctor; “You do not object, of course, to my taking leave of my servant?” Mayr stepped up to him; but the conversation seemed too long to Dr Gudden. “Make haste, so that we can get off,” he repeated several times. Mayr sobbed aloud as his master drove off.

Some persons were standing outside to see the sorrowful train; the King returned their greeting with amiability. At the first turn of the road he rubbed a clear space with his hand on the damp window, and looked back at Neuschwanstein, which he had loved so dearly, and which has never since been inhabited. He looked ill; his complexion was ashy white, his glance irresolute. The horses were changed three times. At the last stage, Seeshaupt, the landlady approached, and respectfully saluted his Majesty. He asked her for a glass of water. As he handed her back the empty glass he thanked her cordially. Weeping, she called after the carriage: “BehÜt Gott, MajestÄtt.”

The new Commission had relinquished the plan of taking him to Linderhof, as it was known that one of his jÆgers was collecting people in the Tyrol to help him over the border. While the carriage, unhindered, was nearing Berg, one hundred and twenty peasants were standing ready to rescue him in the vicinity of Reutte. After waiting for two days they learned that the King had driven another way.

It was Dr Gudden who had decided on Schloss Berg as his prison; this was the more wanting in consideration, since it was there that he had spent his happy youth. Ludwig had learned to know this physician while he was treating his brother, Prince Otto, and cherished a peculiar antipathy to him. “Gudden looks at me in such a curious way,” he said several times to his mother’s Grand Mistress of the Court. “I only hope he won’t discover something to say about me too.”

It was the forenoon of Whitsun Eve when he arrived at his destination. He spoke genially to the gendarme stationed there. “I am glad, Sauer, that you are on duty again,” he said as he went in. In one of the first apartments he entered his eyes fell on his own portrait: a large painting which represented his first landing at Schloss Berg after his accession. How different was that day from this! He was given only two rooms for his use. The windows had been hastily provided with iron bars, and holes had been bored in the doors that he might be under continual observation. He regarded these alterations without saying a word. The doctor ordered him to go early to bed and he obeyed. At two in the morning he awoke, and wished to get up. The keepers would not allow it. They had taken his clothes away from him; despite his earnest prayers they would not give them to him. At last one of them let himself be persuaded into letting him have his socks. Clad only in his night-shirt and in his stockinged feet he walked restlessly hour after hour up and down the room. At six in the morning he asked the keeper to help him with a bath. He allowed the former to assist him to dress, but bade him afterwards fetch his valet and his barber. The keeper answered, what was strictly true, that they had not come with him to his new place of residence.

Whitsunday dawned. Ludwig wished to attend divine service in the neighbouring church. Gudden refused to allow this, fearing that the people would not believe the King to be mad if he showed himself. In the course of the morning he asked for an orange. It was brought to him, but without a fruit-knife. He sent it out again without having touched it. At eleven o’clock Dr Gudden accompanied him on a walk. Two keepers who followed them received a sign to increase the distance from the King. Ludwig and the doctor seated themselves on a bench ten or fifteen paces from the banks of the lake of Starnberg. Ludwig’s quiet, collected demeanour lulled the physician into a feeling of security, which was destined to be fatal to himself.

The King ate his dinner alone at four o’clock. Before seating himself at table he inquired of the keeper who waited upon him whether Gudden had touched his food; he feared that the latter intended to render him unconscious, and that he would show him to the people in this condition to prove that he was mad.

He asked to be allowed to speak with his old acquaintance, Staff-Comptroller Zanders, who was in the castle. Gudden at first would not hear of this; at length he gave way to the King’s supplication, and Zanders was allowed to be with him for half-an-hour, but was required to promise on his word of honour not to arouse any hope in the King’s mind that he might regain his freedom. Ludwig advanced to meet him with the vigour and energy he displayed at his prime—quite a different man from what he had been two days previously. He showed him the bars before the windows, the peepholes in the door, and told him how he had been treated. “How many gendarmes are there in the park to guard me?” he asked. “Six or eight, your Majesty.” “Would they in case of emergency shoot at me?” “How can your Majesty think such a thing!” was the answer.

While this conversation was taking place the chief physician was telegraphing to Munich: “Everything is going wonderfully well here.” A quarter of an hour afterwards the King started on his last walk with Gudden. The sky was overclouded, and a drizzling rain was falling. Two keepers accompanied them. The doctor observed that their presence was unnecessary, and soon afterwards they returned to the castle. The King and his physician struck into the path they had followed in the morning. Ludwig had known the banks of the lake of Starnberg from childhood, and it is more than probable that he had that forenoon chosen the spot where he would free himself from his life. The physician had said he would return with the King at eight o’clock. Half-past eight and nine passed, but they did not appear; and anxiety was felt at the castle in case some accident might have happened to them in the darkness of the park. The assistant doctor had the immediate vicinity carefully searched. This led at first to no result, for no one thought of the lake of Starnberg. Not far from the seat on which Ludwig and Gudden had rested in the forenoon were found later the umbrellas of both men. A fisherman was summoned; and upon rowing a short distance from the shore in his boat the body of Dr Gudden, in a half-sitting posture, with the back bent below the surface of the water, was discovered. A few feet farther out was found the King’s lifeless body, the head downwards, and the arms bent forward. The lake was not so deep at this spot but he could have saved himself had he been so minded.

What had happened at this spot will for ever remain unknown. The sorrowful incident took place without witnesses; but the tracks along the shore, and in the bottom of the lake, which was examined, justify the following assumption. The King was walking on the right side, Gudden on the left, until they reached the seat they had rested on before. The King must then have thrown down his umbrella and run towards the lake, for his footsteps could be seen on the damp moss-grown shore. Gudden had immediately rushed after him, and seized him by the coat-collar. His grasp must have been very firm, for the nail of one of his fingers was splintered. Ludwig, on the other hand, must have continued to press forward, for Gudden had retained both the coats of the King in his hand. Above the doctor’s left eye there was a bruise, which undoubtedly resulted from a blow. A terrible struggle must have taken place.

Dr MÜller made the most strenuous efforts to call Ludwig back to life, but all his exertions were in vain; death had freed the mad King from the torments of his existence.