Schloss Berg—The King’s Death
At four in the morning Ludwig left Neuschwanstein.
In the first carriage sat Dr Müller and two keepers. In the second was the King, quite alone. By the side of the coachman sat the head keeper from the madhouse at Munich, and close at the rear of the carriage rode a man who had orders sharply to watch his Majesty, and give a sign at the slightest suspicious movement. Dr Gudden, a police officer, and several keepers followed afterwards. When Ludwig had taken his seat in his equipage he said to the doctor; “You do not object, of course, to my taking leave of my servant?” Mayr stepped up to him; but the conversation seemed too long to Dr Gudden. “Make haste, so that we can get off,” he repeated several times. Mayr sobbed aloud as his master drove off.
Some persons were standing outside to see the sorrowful train; the King returned their greeting with amiability. At the first turn of the road he rubbed a clear space with his hand on the damp window, and looked back at Neuschwanstein, which he had loved so dearly, and which has never since been inhabited. He looked ill; his complexion was ashy white, his glance irresolute. The horses were changed three times. At the last stage, Seeshaupt, the landlady approached, and respectfully saluted his Majesty. He asked her for a glass of water. As he handed her back the empty glass he thanked her cordially. Weeping, she called after the carriage: “Behüt Gott, Majestätt.”
The new Commission had relinquished the plan of taking him to Linderhof, as it was known that one of his jægers was collecting people in the Tyrol to help him over the border. While the carriage, unhindered, was nearing Berg, one hundred and twenty peasants were standing ready to rescue him in the vicinity of Reutte. After waiting for two days they learned that the King had driven another way.
It was Dr Gudden who had decided on Schloss Berg as his prison; this was the more wanting in consideration, since it was there that he had spent his happy youth. Ludwig had learned to know this physician while he was treating his brother, Prince Otto, and cherished a peculiar antipathy to him. “Gudden looks at me in such a curious way,” he said several times to his mother’s Grand Mistress of the Court. “I only hope he won’t discover something to say about me too.”
It was the forenoon of Whitsun Eve when he arrived at his destination. He spoke genially to the gendarme stationed there. “I am glad, Sauer, that you are on duty again,” he said as he went in. In one of the first apartments he entered his eyes fell on his own portrait: a large painting which represented his first landing at Schloss Berg after his accession. How different was that day from this! He was given only two rooms for his use. The windows had been hastily provided with iron bars, and holes had been bored in the doors that he might be under continual observation. He regarded these alterations without saying a word. The doctor ordered him to go early to bed and he obeyed. At two in the morning he awoke, and wished to get up. The keepers would not allow it. They had taken his clothes away from him; despite his earnest prayers they would not give them to him. At last one of them let himself be persuaded into letting him have his socks. Clad only in his night-shirt and in his stockinged feet he walked restlessly hour after hour up and down the room. At six in the morning he asked the keeper to help him with a bath. He allowed the former to assist him to dress, but bade him afterwards fetch his valet and his barber. The keeper answered, what was strictly true, that they had not come with him to his new place of residence.
Whitsunday dawned. Ludwig wished to attend divine service in the neighbouring church. Gudden refused to allow this, fearing that the people would not believe the King to be mad if he showed himself. In the course of the morning he asked for an orange. It was brought to him, but without a fruit-knife. He sent it out again without having touched it. At eleven o’clock Dr Gudden accompanied him on a walk. Two keepers who followed them received a sign to increase the distance from the King. Ludwig and the doctor seated themselves on a bench ten or fifteen paces from the banks of the lake of Starnberg. Ludwig’s quiet, collected demeanour lulled the physician into a feeling of security, which was destined to be fatal to himself.
The King ate his dinner alone at four o’clock. Before seating himself at table he inquired of the keeper who waited upon him whether Gudden had touched his food; he feared that the latter intended to render him unconscious, and that he would show him to the people in this condition to prove that he was mad.
He asked to be allowed to speak with his old acquaintance, Staff-Comptroller Zanders, who was in the castle. Gudden at first would not hear of this; at length he gave way to the King’s supplication, and Zanders was allowed to be with him for half-an-hour, but was required to promise on his word of honour not to arouse any hope in the King’s mind that he might regain his freedom. Ludwig advanced to meet him with the vigour and energy he displayed at his prime—quite a different man from what he had been two days previously. He showed him the bars before the windows, the peepholes in the door, and told him how he had been treated. “How many gendarmes are there in the park to guard me?” he asked. “Six or eight, your Majesty.” “Would they in case of emergency shoot at me?” “How can your Majesty think such a thing!” was the answer.