Always a remarkably small eater, her tastes were extremely simple. For weeks at a time she would live on nothing but milk, and even at state banquets often took nothing but a slice or two of wheat bread, a cup of bouillon, and some fruit. She detested liquor of any sort, and never tasted it except when the physicians insisted upon her drinking a little wine for her health. As a rule, she had little respect for medical knowledge and much preferred to treat herself with her own remedies. She had a morbid horror of getting stout. Every day she had herself weighed, and if her usual weight increased at all she would live on oranges till it was reduced to the proper amount, in spite of her physicians’ warnings of the danger of so slender a diet. But although Elizabeth cared so little for eating, when at home she gave much attention to the menus presented to her each morning by the chef, which she often altered to suit herself. No table could be served more daintily and artistically than that of the Austrian court when the Empress was present. She selected the costliest porcelain and glass and had gold and silver services for all her palaces, though they were rarely used owing to her long absences. Maria Theresa had sixteen children, and her son the Emperor Leopold Second seventeen; so the Austrian imperial family is a large one, aside from the numbers of foreign princes in Vienna who are related to the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine. But except on one or two state occasions in the course of the winter these distant connections rarely saw either Franz Joseph or Elizabeth. Absorbed in cares of state and caring for little but his shooting trips in later years, the Emperor led almost as solitary a life as his wife. When they were together with their children, the Empress always strove to make these reunions as happy and cheerful as possible, as if to make up in some degree for the family life her long absences deprived him of. They would spend long cosey evenings on the terraces or by the fireside, and Rudolf would often join the party, or, if the Emperor were busy, Elizabeth would entertain herself with Marie Valerie and some of her ladies-in-waiting. The court in general, however, kept aloof from her. Her manner was cold and forbidding to those she did not like, though her intimate companions had the deepest love and admiration for her and she was worshipped by her servants, none of whom was too humble to share her sympathy and interest. One morning in Vienna it was learned that one of Elizabeth’s maids had died during the night, and very harsh comments were made on the fact of the Empress having been seen riding in the Prater on that very same afternoon. It was not told, however, that she had spent the whole of the previous night at the dying woman’s bedside, and it was only when death had ended the maid’s sufferings that the Empress had gone out into the fresh air.