It will easily be understood that his increasing shyness was a subject of conversation in all circles. We have heard that rumours had already been current that he thought of abdicating the throne; these were fed by his strange caprices and his retired life. Count Holnstein wrote to Bismarck as early as 1871: "Before every audience and every court ceremony the King drinks large quantities of strong wine, and he then says the most extraordinary things. He wishes to abdicate in favour of Prince Otto, who does not entertain the slightest wish for it.... The Ultramontanes know this. They have chosen their candidate for the National Assembly: Prince Luitpold; he is also their candidate for the throne. Perhaps they will succeed in getting him elected in spite of Prince Otto's claims!" CHAPTER XX Prince Otto's Insanity--The King's Morbid Sensations The House of Wittelsbach has been terribly ravaged by insanity. In the course of one hundred years more than twenty members of the family have been visited by this misfortune. The sons of Maximilian II. were burdened with exceedingly neurotic tendencies. Their grandfather had been eccentric in a high degree; and a sister of King Maximilian was for long retained in a madhouse. The parents of Ludwig II. and Prince Otto were, moreover, near relations. They were both connected by ties of blood with the Royal House of Hesse-Darmstadt, where there had been insanity for many years. The grandmothers of the Bavarian Queen-mother, on both her father's and her mother's side, were Hessian princesses. The mother of Ludwig I., who died in her youth, likewise belonged to this house; and his wife was the granddaughter of a princess of Darmstadt. At the beginning of 1872 the newspapers began to insert notices in their columns to the effect that Prince Otto of Bavaria was suffering. In the fifties and sixties he had been the picture of health. Where Ludwig had withdrawn, he had gone forward towards people with outstretched hands. He had always been gay, amiable, and lively. The unnaturally strict upbringing, and the rapidity with which, from almost unendurable restraint, he had been thrown into unfettered freedom, had, however, been a concurrent cause of his losing his mental balance. Hardly two and twenty years of age, he had followed the army (1870). We know that, despite his wish to remain with it, the King had recalled him to Hohenschwangau. The summons was probably the dictate of the elder brother's personal feelings; but the Prince's nervous system had also shown itself to be unfitted for the bloody scenes of a battlefield. Crown Prince Friedrich wrote in his diary: "Prince Otto came to take leave before his return to Munich. He was looking pale and wretched. He sat in front of me, apparently suffering from cold shivering fits, while I developed to him the necessity of our making common cause in military and diplomatic affairs. I could not make out whether he understood me, or only heard what I said."