When Friedrich came to Munich in later years he always stayed there incognito. He visited the art and industrial museums, and received some of his old companions-in-arms; but he never visited the King, nor did the King ever seek him. The antipathy grew on both sides. Unfortunately, Ludwig was at no pains to conceal his feelings; he spoke often and unreservedly of his bitterness towards this member of the Prussian Imperial House. His entourage did not look upon it as a duty to preserve silence with regard to what they had heard. The King's words sometimes journeyed viâ Vienna to Berlin, and the effect made itself felt in due course. It was in 1874, at the railway station at Munich, that he greeted the Emperor Wilhelm for the last time. After this date the "victorious old man" also travelled incognito through Bavaria when he visited Gastein in the summers. CHAPTER XXII King Ludwig and the Empress Elisabeth Ludwig's spite against a single member of the House of Hohenzollern destroyed the good relations with his relatives in Berlin. By way of off-set, the sympathy he felt for the Empress Elizabeth had the effect of causing his relations with the House of Hapsburg to be very friendly. His betrothal to his cousin, Sophie Charlotte, had left behind it bitter memories. Although it was he who had dissolved the connection, and although she would hardly have been capable of making him happy, it is a fact that he became the slave of melancholy after the engagement was broken off. The Duchess had much to forgive him; and yet it appeared to the sick King, who condemned himself to loneliness, that it was he who was the injured party. In one of the rooms which he usually occupied hung the portrait of a woman, over which he had caused a thick silken veil to be hung. He would stand sunk in thought before this picture, walking slowly when he turned away, as if it cost him an effort to leave it. No outside personage was ever permitted to see it, and no one knew whom it represented. It was supposed that it might be a portrait of Marie Antoinette of France, for whom he cherished a great admiration; but many also thought that the painting represented the Duchesse d'Alençon, whom he had never forgotten. Nearly the whole of the royal house had taken the side of his former fiancée, and were with reason annoyed at his fickleness. In spite of the wrong which had been done the ducal house, one of Sophie's brothers and one of her sisters had been indulgent towards him. Duke Karl Teodor, the oculist, had scrutinised his cousin with the eye of a doctor; he had found excuses for his action in his diseased mental condition. Elizabeth of Austria had understanding even of aspects of his character which could not possibly have been sympathetic to her, and she was attracted by qualities in him which had displeased and alarmed her sister.