As soon as the nature of the disease from which Frederick was suffering had been ascertained, his opponents, Prince Bismarck first and foremost, dug out from the most remote recesses of the family archives of the house of Hohenzollern an obsolete and forgotten law barring from the succession to the throne of Prussia any prince of the blood who was afflicted with an incurable malady. Of course, the original object of the statute in question was to enable the elimination from the line of succession of princes afflicted with hopeless insanity, or some such disease as would prevent them from administering the government, thus rendering the institution of a regency necessary. In one word, the purpose of the measure was to prevent such a situation from arising in Prussia as prevails now in Bavaria, where, since 1886 the throne has been occupied by a lunatic prince, who was incurably insane for many years before his accession to the crown, and whose dementia takes that peculiar form, which is described in the Bible as having overtaken Nebuchadnezzar. King Otto of Bavaria imagines himself to be alternately a quadruped or a bird, and when he is not browsing on leaves and grass in the gardens of his prison palace at Fürstenried, under the impression that he is a sheep or goat, he will stand on one leg in the centre of a shallow pond, firmly convinced that he is a stork, occasionally flapping his long coat-tails in lieu of wings, and greedily attempting to devour any frogs or tadpoles that may come within his reach, unless prevented by his attendants from doing so.