THE MAD KING OF THE BAVARIANS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue I, 4 July 1896, Page 8

THE MAD KING OF THE BAVARIANS.

BAVARIA has just been celebrating the forty-eighth birthday of her mad King, Otto, by military parades and religious services, just as though he were not, to all intents and purposes, dead and buried. Time was when these celebrations were something more than official and formal. When most of the loyal Bavarians were chafing under an unpopular regency, the Government looked forward to King Otto’s early restoration to reason and to his throne, of which he had been unjustly deprived. But the popular mind has changed, and the popular heart no longer bleeds for the unhappy monarch who has passed so manydays in a living tomb. Doubtless men may still be found in Bavaria, especially in the remoter rural districts, who believe that King Otto is sane and that his imprisonment is due to a Prussian plot. But their numbers become smaller every year, and their faith in the King coming by his own has long lost its vigour. Every year physicians examine King Otto and report respecting his mental condition to the Regent and German Emperor. This year, as usual, the report declares that Otto is irretrievably mad, though physically he continues in robust health and will certainly live to a good old age unless, indeed, cerebral apoplexy should follow one of his paroxysms of maniacal violence. An interesting picture for the moralist or satirist is

presented by that lonely Bavarian Castle where this insane monarch is remorselessly secluded from the world. The royal household is complete in every particular and maintained at great cost. The fullest etiquette of courts is observed. Lords in waiting, grooms of the chamber, chamberlains, physicians and the like bend low as they enter the royal presence and retire backward in a strictly orthodox manner. Their positions must have been trying for the courtiers in the earlier days, before their practice in dodging missiles had been made perfect, for Otto has varying moods, not the least infrequent being the childish fondness for throwing things at people. For this, among other reasons, the personnel of mad Otto’s court has been unchanged during the eight

years he has occupied his present quarters save by death. Otto’s aim is often painfully true, but the injured courtier never makes any fuss, and cheerfully returns to his duty as soon as he is out of the surgeon’s hands. One of these days King Otto will doubtless kill somebody, but probably the outside world will never know it.

At one time Otto was enormously fat, but he has lost most of his surplus flesh within the last three years, with advantage to his general health. His physical strength is said to be enormous, necessitating the efforts of half a dozen men to restrain him from murder and suicide during his more violent paroxysms. It is needless to say that etiquette on these occasions is not strictly observed, the King being, perforce, treated like any other homicidal maniac.

After these fits of frantic violence King Otto invariably subsides into a state of maudlin apathy, and with

occasional degeneracy into bestiality. At rare intervals, becoming rarer every year, he has glimmerings of reason, followed invariably by mental darkness blacker than ever. Why the pitiful pretence of keeping this poor maniac on the throne and rendering him royal honours has been maintained all these years passes the understanding of the average man.