Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1874 — The Freaks of an Eccentric. King. [ARTICLE]

The Freaks of an Eccentric. King.

When I arrived in Munich the Bavarians were looking everywhere for their King. He had gone—disappeared from their gaze. The court was distracted, the courtiers frantic. They searched for him at the palace, on the top of his favorite mountains, and nowhere could they find their master. Suddenly a telegram arrived from Paris telling us he had gone there incognito (rather he had attempted it). When a royal personage goes off suddenly without crying “ gare” there must be something in it; but what this particular something was no one knew. Several days were passed in suspense when the news came that the King had gone to Paris to study the chateau of Versailles and the bed of Louig XIV. Some say the King is only original; others that he is not quite sane; at any rate he is young, handsome, and peculiar. He hates and flies from the world; his people are nothing to him; he comes and goes no one knows where. He avows a passionate admiration for Wagner and his music, and is in love with the old-fashioned majesty of the King Louis XTV. To imitate him he is going to create another Versailles. He has chosen an island in the middle of the largest of the lakes, called Chiemsee. I believe there used to be a convent of Benedictines on it, but the principal attraction is the beautiful view extending over the Bavarian Alps, from Sonahe to Salzburg, in Austria. Here he intends to reproduce the palace and park of Versailles. The cost and labor of carrying all the materials for building across the lake are matters of little importance to the young monarch. He was in the full tide of anpther erratic construction at Falsenburg, costing already .our millions of francs, but that he hao now abandoned after eight or nine years of hard work. But what cannot a King do? Poets glow in their praises of his “beautiful artistic nature ”; painters put upon canvas his glorious deeds; even Wagner makes music at his command; and the populace, awed by such vast ideas, love him, and the mystery with which he surrounds himself adds to his popularity. He is not like a sovereign. I forget who it was who was so unpopular that, on some journey, his courtiers, fearful lest he should remark the dead silence that attended his progress, had the idea to attach some mechanical apparatus to his carriage, that with every turn of the wheel cried “ Vive l' Empereur.” The potentate, half asleep, would awake occasionally to the conciousness of his people’s devotion, and congratulate himself on the gratitude they felt for all his benefits. In our day we are all actors; some kings play at being comedians, some princes are being jockeys, and like them break their necks on race courses; but Louis 11., of Bavaria, plays seriously the part of King. Though he has thirty chateaux built by his ancestors, all more or less beautiful and in good repair, he will not live in them, but prefers one of his own making. With great labor, stone and iron are carried by men and beast to the summit of some pet mountain, and there, in the midst of the forest, only surrounded by his courtiers, does he hold his court. Extravagant stories are told of him—-that he walks about in the costume of Louis XIV., doubtless with silken doublet and hose, powdered wig, and the proverbial cane, preceded by torches borne by gayly-dressed pages, and followed by his Chamberlain. Again, that in winter he will go in a golden sleigh, rushing through villages ing in the snow, with a frightful noise of galloping horses and a sudden gleam of hundreds of torches. By the time the villagers are aroused and realize that it is the King he has disappeared. Then they say that when he wants a little music he orders the theater to be lighted up, and at midnight, long after the last glass of beer has been drank in quiet Munich, he arrives noiselessly in his box, and the play begins. The actors do their painful work of performing a whole opera to an empty house, and to the dead silence. Suddenly the King leaves as quietly as he came, and all is over.

The King comes reluctantly to Munich, but being obliged to appear at times he has consoled himself by arranging a winter garden. There Orange trees bloom, tropical fruits thrive, fragrant fountains play incessantly, birds of all kinds, from the hummingbird to the cockatoo, and music, in soft and dreamy measures, fill the air—even the moon, by a wonderful mechanism, rises, slimes, pales and sets every night. On the occasion of his brother’s marriage, not long since, the King cast about in his mind for a suitable entertainment for the royal pair. He could think of nothing better to offer them than what had never ' been seen by other eyes than his own —a ! fete in the moonlit garden. They wer* duly invited; the moon was set to sliin- ! iug* the fountains to playing, t the birds sang, music played, the pages served fruit and wine on crystal plateaux, and the King w r alked with his new sister in tli ejnrdin d'hiver quite alone. I wonder if. the young couple were much impressed with this attention! This royal brother, not looking with that indulgence on the softer sex usual with gentlemen in the ordinary walks of life, evidently thought , it a great compliment and treat. When, during the visit to Paris, he walked in the streets, I believe his courtiers had to beg him to alter his usual gait, which it seems does verv well for the forests he chooses to dwell in, but not for the .boulevards of Paris. The effect on the Parisian public of a young gentleman dragging one foot after the other, in the style of Tragedy kings in the play, was anything but imposing, and only less ludicrous than his traveling coach, all flass and gilding. —Munich Cor. Boston ournal.