As a boy, we are told, the Castle of Hohenschwangau in the Bavarian Alps fascinated his imagination, for “knights in armour spoke to him; Rhine maidens drew him into their arms; he saw his ancestors, the old Wittelsbach heroes, seated upon their war-horses, their swords drawn, fighting their way into Rome, or resting under the palms by the banks of the Nile.” At two and twenty he betrothed himself to his cousin, Sophie Charlotte--daughter of Maximilian of Bavaria and sister of the Empress of Austria--who afterwards became Duchesse d’Alençon, and perished in the fire at the Bazar de la Charité. But for some reason the match was broken off, and henceforth he became “more melancholy and more enamoured of solitude,” dwelling “in pathetic loneliness, with little society save his brooding dreams--his days, or rather his nights, for he had already begun to invert the division of the twenty-four hours, peopled with the heroes and legends of myth.” Once only, it is said, did he really rouse himself, when he threw in his lot with Prussia in 1870. But after all it was only a fictitious enthusiasm, for he would not accompany his army, backing out on the plea that he had strained a sinew. He grew tired of life and disgusted with everything, and there seems to have been in his unbalanced mind some jealousy of the Crown Prince Frederick, who had performed the deeds which had ever been the subject of his dreams. And his extraordinary eccentricities got gradually worse, and he acquired the habit of drinking a mixture of champagne and Rhenish wine in which violets floated, consorting only with his servants. Finally, when it was announced to him that his deposition had been decided, he exclaimed, “Let the traitors be thrown into the deepest dungeon, loaded with chains, and leave them to die of starvation.” But not very long afterwards he was removed to the Château of Berg, where he was mysteriously drowned in the Starnberg Lake.