Prince Leopold of Bavaria had married in 1873 her eldest daughter. Ludwig had on this occasion emerged from his customary retirement. Princess Gisela was one of his few women relations who could boast of his amiability. Flattering as this might be, it was at times exceedingly inconvenient; for the King, who turned night into day, sent her presents and bouquets of flowers in the night. He would not alter his habits either for her or her mother's sake. The Empress's youngest daughter, Marie Valerie, expressed the wish to make her "uncle's" acquaintance, and Elizabeth was at some pains to induce him to receive her favourite child. But he would not be disturbed in his quiet. "I don't know why the Empress is always telling me about her Valerie," he said to one of those near him. "Valerie wants to see me, she says; but I don't at all want to see her Valerie." CHAPTER XXIII King Ludwig and Queen Marie A picture very often to be seen in Bavaria is one representing Maximilian II. and his family in the garden at Hohenschwangau. The Queen is sitting with Prince Otto on her lap, and the King, standing beside her, has laid his hand on the Crown Prince's head. He is in the full prime of his manhood; his wife is radiant with happiness and beauty. The lapse of a few years had transformed this family life in the Bavarian royal castle. The bright and happy Queen had become a widow, the proud mother a Mater Dolorosa. Prince Otto, the child of her heart, was hopelessly insane. The admiration which Ludwig had excited, the great hopes of which at the beginning of his reign he had been the centre, could not outweigh her fearful anxiety for his future. Until the middle of the seventies, she and her eldest son had been in the habit of residing at Hohenschwangau at the same time, the Queen-mother using the ground floor of the castle, and the young King the first floor. Though they both loved the place equally well, and though Hohenschwangau was Queen Marie's dower house, her son's secluded life caused an alteration in this arrangement also: in later years he went to Linderhof when she came to Hohenschwangau, and upon his return she retired to Elbingen-Alp. When they met he showed his mother great respect; and when, as sometimes happened, disharmonies occurred between them he restrained his annoyance. But the Queen-mother's bourgeois view of life never found the key to his composite nature. Repulsed time after time, she relinquished the hope of ever winning his confidence, though love still lived in the hearts of both.