Elizabeth never appeared to better advantage than when on horseback. Her habit, which seemed as if moulded to her figure, was usually dark blue, trimmed with fur. She also wore a low round hat and heavy riding-gloves, but never a flower or bow or anything superfluous except a black fan, which she carried in her hand or hung by a strap to her saddle. Strangers generally supposed this was to protect her complexion, but her friends were well aware that it was merely to guard herself from the inevitable photographers who pursued her everywhere. “I hate being photographed,” she once declared: “every time in my life that I have been, something dreadful has happened to me.” She liked to attend to her horses personally and visited them every morning, taking sugar and carrots in her pocket for them, sometimes even going into their stalls to pet or rub them down. At Schönbrunn she had a room the walls of which were completely covered with pictures of horses. “Look,” she once said to her Greek teacher when showing him this room, “all these are friends I have lost. Many of them have died for me, which is more than I can say of any human being. People would far rather have me killed.” She was never so happy as when in the saddle, dashing through the forests of Austria or the wide Hungarian plains. But these long rides also served another purpose. On both sides of the house she had relatives whose lives were darkened by the fatal inheritance of the Wittelsbachs; so it was not strange that as she grew older her sensitive nature should have brooded over the fear of developing the family disorder. To banish these terrible fits of depression she would gallop for hours, insensible to weather or physical exhaustion, sometimes drenched to the skin, and it was only when she felt her horse quiver under her with fatigue that she would slacken her pace. Immediately after the coronation the Hungarians presented to their Queen the castle of Gödöllö, situated in the depths of the forest, not far from Budapest, and for many years it was her favorite residence. Here there was nothing to break the peaceful seclusion but the plaintive notes of the Zingaris’ violins. Here she was her own mistress, spending long, happy, care-free days. She usually rose at four o’clock, and was in the saddle from five till eleven, when she breakfasted. It was an ideal country for riding, and she became familiar with every forest pathway for miles around, often stopping at some camp of the Czikos to chat with these half-savage Bedouins of the Hungarian Puszta, in whom she felt the greatest interest. She brought them gifts of tobacco, and was always welcomed with delight by these strange herdsmen.