Both Franz Joseph and Elizabeth were very proud of their only son, whose winning ways and kindness of heart had made him wonderfully popular with all classes. He had inherited his mother’s impatience of restraint as well as her literary and artistic tastes, and, like her, cared little for people of his own rank. His own intimate circle was composed of poets, artists, and journalists, and he had an enthusiastic friend and teacher in the celebrated naturalist, Brehm. According to the custom of Austrian princes, he had been required to learn some trade and chose that of printing, but he possessed a marked talent for writing and published several books of real merit. He adored his mother, and the relation between them was one of the closest confidence and intimacy, but Elizabeth’s love for her son did not blind her to his faults, and she fully realized that he had all his father’s youthful susceptibility and love of pleasure. Both she and the Emperor were agreed as to the necessity of his marrying early, not only to insure the succession, but also because they hoped it would steady the rather wild and headstrong young prince. Franz Joseph, however, had political advantages most in mind in the choice of a wife for his son, while Elizabeth was chiefly concerned as to his prospects of domestic happiness. She felt the importance of his marrying some one with sufficient beauty and intelligence to restrain his somewhat errant fancy and win his respect as well as affection. There were but few marriageable princesses in Europe at that time (Rudolf was then in his twentieth year), and the Emperor’s choice was far from satisfactory to Elizabeth, for it fell on the Belgian princess Stephanie, a seventeen-year-old girl of very ordinary mind and not at all attractive in appearance. Elizabeth had no liking either for King Leopold Second of Belgium or his wife, an Austrian archduchess, who played rather an unenviable role at her husband’s court, and bitterly opposed the match; but the Queen’s sister, the Archduchess Elizabeth (mother of the Queen Regent of Spain and a favorite cousin of the Emperor’s) brought all her influence to bear in her niece’s favor, and the Empress’ objections were overruled, Rudolf himself, meanwhile, seeming to regard the whole affair with perfect indifference.