She adored children, rich and poor alike, and at the close of the Vienna Exposition took into her service a little Berber boy named Mahmoud, who had acted as page in the Cairene house erected in the Prater by the Khedive of Egypt and afterward presented to the Empress. Mahmoud adored his mistress and she was exceedingly kind to him. When the climate of Vienna affected his lungs and he fell ill with pneumonia, she nursed and tended him herself, and he became the favorite playmate of the Archduchess Valerie, greatly to the horror of the Austrian aristocracy. Patience was not one of the Wittelsbach virtues, and so many false and cruel reports were circulated about her in Vienna by careless tongues that when Elizabeth was informed of the indignation she had aroused by her kindness to Mahmoud she responded by having the two children photographed together and the picture displayed in public. This act of defiance naturally added to the number of her detractors, and many even began to hint that the Empress’ restlessness and eccentricities were certain signs of approaching insanity. But there was still another reason for the Empress’ unpopularity in the Austrian capital. Her husband’s German subjects keenly felt her lack of sympathy with them and resented her unconcealed preference for Hungary. It was even rumored that she intended to bestow all her Austrian possessions upon the Magyars, but this was a rank injustice to Elizabeth, for throughout the Empire, Austria as well as Hungary, there was scarcely a charitable institution or cause that she did not aid or support, nor a case of suffering and need that she did not attempt to relieve. When Austria took possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, the Empress found a fresh field for her energies in caring for the wounded soldiers and providing for the families of those who were killed; and when cholera and smallpox broke out in Budapest, she insisted upon accompanying the Emperor, who was obliged to go there for the opening of the National Assembly, declaring that in time of danger her place was at her husband’s side.