At Neuschwanstein the King would allow no servants to wait on him, and when he pressed a spring his round dinner-table sank through a hole in the floor; the next course was then set, and the table ascended into the dining-room again. Plenty of champagne in ice pails was placed near the King, and if the table did not return quickly enough he flung some bottles through the hole, as an emphatic reminder to the servants below that he objected to be kept waiting.
Sometimes at night (doubtless at the fancied bidding of the Spirit of the Mountains) the King would arouse his household in order to set out for one of his hunting-boxes, and peasants who heard the noise of his retinue passing in the dark shivered and crossed themselves, for they imagined that the Wild Huntsman and his ghostly hounds were abroad.
Elizabeth constantly wrote in verse to her cousin, and in this correspondence she was "the Sea-gull" and the King "the Mountain Eagle." The Empress was very fond of Ludwig, whose romanticism struck some corresponding chord in her own strange soul, and she never forgave the late Prince Regent for his share in the final tragedy which terminated Ludwig's existence.
Countess Marie Larisch, My Past
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House for Otto 7
1999
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