Louis soon recovered his popularity with his late subjects. The cares and ambitions of kingship put aside, the tempestuous emotions of manhood at last exhausted, the old man was now free to devote himself wholly to his first and last love, Art. Though now a private person, his interest in the embellishment of Munich and the enrichment of the city's collections never waned. He maintained more than one residence in Bavaria, and was indeed a familiar and well-liked figure in the streets of his old capital; but most of his remaining years he spent wandering in Italy and the south of France. He lived to witness the expulsion of his son, Otto, from the throne of Greece; the death of his other son and successor, Maximilian II.; and the humiliation of his country by the arms of ever-broadening Prussia. But he could always find consolation in the contemplation of the beautiful, and in the society of men of wit and genius. The last twenty years of his life were, perhaps, the happiest he had known. He died at Nice on 29th February 1868, in the eighty-third year of his age. You may see his equestrian statue at Munich, but the whole city is virtually his monument. A great man he was not, but he was the greatest king Bavaria has yet known. So he passed from the stage of history:-- "A courteous prince, and sociable, sympathetic gentleman; a poet, too, in a small way, taking off his diamond collar at Weimar, and putting it round Goethe's neck; he had a gracious, winning, kingly way of his own, and many as were his faults and his foibles, neither his son nor his grandson supplanted him in the affections of the Bavarian people."[18] XXVI LOLA IN SEARCH OF A HOME "Her last hope for Bavaria being broken," Lola (to use her own words) "turned her attention towards Switzerland, as the nearest shelter from the storm that was beating above her head. She had influenced the King of Bavaria to withhold his consent from a proposition by Austria, which had for its object the destruction of that little republic of Switzerland. If republics are ungrateful, Switzerland certainly was not so to Lola Montez; for it received her with open arms, made her its guest, and generously offered to bestow an establishment upon her for life."