Los Angeles herald., 1892-10-30
ABOUT MAD MONARCHS
They Can Create a Vast
Amount of Trouble.
THE CASE OF OTTO OF BAVARIA.

He Succeeded His Suicide Brother, and
Now Finds His Chief Delight in Trying
to Kill His Subjects with a Gun Rem
dered Harmless by His Attendants.
Whether monarchs go mad oftener than
other people it is not possible to decide, but
it is certain that their madness cuts a
much larger figure in history And it
really seems that their mad antics have
been more erratic than the average, even
from Nebuchadnezzar to Otto of Bavaria.
When the king becomes raving maniac
his ministers have a comparatively easy
problem to solve 1t is the half mad fell
lows who give trouble, such as Caligula,
Caracalla, Louis XIV, George III and
crazy Paul of Russia.
The last named was probable the most
thoroughly diseased monarch to live and
go about in the disguise of an ordinary
man of modern times. His three daugh-
tiers inherited many of his ailments, and
the fact that the grandson of one of those
daughters is now emperor of Germany is
spoken of by thoughtful Germans with an
ominous shake of the head. The Bour-
bons, once the noblest race in Europe, died
out of slow moral and physical decay, and
the descendants of the famous Charles V
of Spain and Austria went the same way.
OF all conditions that which gives most
trouble to friends is when man is intel
lectually disordered little too much to be
trusted and not quite enough to be shut
ap. And unfortunately this is the sort of
madness to which monarchs are most
prone.
Fortunately for Bavaria, however, her
king has long since passed that point.
King Ludwig drowned himself in fit OF
melancholy mania several years ago. and
King Otto, his brother, succeeded. He is
of the same remarkable physical develop
ment as his dead brother, tall and broad
and muscular, with tremendous reach OF
arm and an immense stride. His hair is
long, shaggy and uncombed. His un-
kempt beard reaches below his waist. He
dresses in black broadcloth, of which he
gets new suit twice every week, for he
has such strong idiosyncracy against
napkins and towels and handkerchief
that he refuses to carry or use any of them,
and makes his coat tails and sleeves do for
all three
Only occasionally, when his sixty-year-
sold nurse, Nine. Marie, approaches him,
does a CLEAN of intelligence cross his
blurred features Sometimes he devotes
hours to disjointed discussions of all sorts
of questions with purely imaginary per-
sons. He then gesticulates furiously, and
often becomes beside himself with rage
over the supposititious obtuseness of his
opponent Twice weekly he sinks into a
state of almost unbroken lethargy. Dur
ing such fit he smokes cigarettes con-
stantly, sometimes as many as a hundred
a day. With every cigarette he uses a
whole box of matches, for after having
lighted his cigarette he carefully sets off
with the match all the other matches. A
dozen times or more he has just escaped
burning himself to death
His favorite amusement is shooting at
peasants-not pheasants, as a recent dis
patch had it. He takes aim from his window
with gun loaded with powder and wad-
ding Che believes there is ball in it), and as
the peasants pass on a distant road he
bangs away. Those whb have been in