“Archduke Leopold Ferdinand” (we there read) “is a very intelligent man, but somewhat eccentric, whimsical in a high degree, and difficult to manage. A prominent feature of his character is irony and sarcasm. He has in this way given much displeasure to officers of high rank, and this is the only reason why, in spite of his jovial and agreeable manner, he has made no friends in the army. While at Iglau he was constantly in conflict with the commander of the regiment. Thus, one day he went out riding disguised as a lady, in company with another officer, and was seen and recognised by his commanding officer, who, of course, took him to task. He hates etiquette, loves free and easy manners, and has always had little intercourse with the aristocracy, preferring lively young people of the middle class.” The free-and-easiness of the Archduke’s manners had, indeed, manifested itself in the presence of Francis Joseph himself, on the day on which he was summoned to the Emperor’s presence to be told that his way of life was dissolute and indecorous. He did not, like John Orth, pelt the Emperor with the insignia of his Orders; but he found another means, not less effective, of carrying the war into the enemy’s camp, bowing politely and responding: “I hear what you say, sir, but I fail to see why I should pay any attention to it. If there is a mote in my eye, there is a beam in yours. When you speak of such matters as these, I do not regard you as the Emperor of Austria—I merely regard you as Herr Schratt.” And so saying, he ceremoniously bowed himself out before Francis Joseph could lay his finger on the electric button which would have summoned the secret police. Thus, by that _tu quoque_, he justified his own preference for “lively young people of the middle-class”; but it nevertheless seems that, in Switzerland, the particular liveliness of Fräulein Adamovics, after jarring from the first upon his sister’s taste, came eventually to jar upon his own. It transpired in the course of time—in the course of a very short time, in fact—that the tastes, manners, and customs of Fräulein Adamovics deviated from the healthy norm no less than those of the more eccentric of the Habsburgs, albeit in a different direction. Her passion for the simple life and the return to nature lured her on to proceedings hardly compatible with sanity. The goal of self-realisation, it seemed to her, could only be attained if men and women divested themselves of their clothing, and climbed trees in order to crack nuts.