“Walking never tires me,” she said once to one of her attendants, “and I have my father to thank for it. He was an indefatigable hunter and wanted my sisters and myself to be able to leap and spring like the chamois.” She also learned to swim and ride and dearly loved to sit a horse and feel the wind blowing through her hair. She was never happier than when riding about Lake Starnberg on her little pony, and in the winter, when forced to stay in the capital, it was her greatest joy to escape to the stables, where she would mount the most unmanageable horses that could be found. One day while playing circus, as she often did, she was thrown by a wild, full-blooded animal. Her governess uttered a shriek of terror, but Elizabeth quickly rose to her feet, neither frightened nor hurt, and laughingly besought permission to mount the horse again, which the terrified governess refused to grant. The happiest time in the whole year to her was when the warm spring days made it possible for them to return to Possenhoffen and she could enjoy unlimited freedom once more. She was passionately fond of flowers, and it is still told among the Bavarian Alps how “Liese of Possenhoffen” used to scramble about the wild unbeaten mountain paths to return at last with her arms full of edelweiss. Her father taught her to play the zither, and she often went with him on long tramps among the Alps, stopping now and then for rest and refreshment at some hut where they would play dance music on their own instruments or on some they found there. On one occasion they had done this in a remote region where the huntsman and his daughter were not known, and the people gave the pretty child a piece of money in payment. Elizabeth always kept it. “It is the only money I ever earned,” she once said, when showing it to an acquaintance. There was never much pocket money for her to buy presents with, and she used often to spend the evenings knitting stockings for her mountain friends or sewing on some piece of needlework. The country folk about Possenhoffen idolized the little Liese, and when overtaken by one of the autumn storms she would often take refuge in their huts, quite alone, and sit down by the fire to chat and laugh with old or young. Her parents saw nothing amiss in this. Duke Max liked nothing better than to enter into the lives of his people, and when the mother was told how her daughter ran about with her brothers or played the zither in hovels while the peasants danced she but smiled indulgently, saying: “She is only a child. I will take her education in hand later on.”