The good duke might have filled his coffers by pillaging travellers, as
many of his neighbors did; but he scorned to thrive by robbery, and
lived in grandiose but honest penury.

Max took readily to the use of arms, and by the time he was eighteen,
which was three years before our now famous journey to Burgundy, a
strong, time-hardened man might well beware of him. When the boy was
fourteen or fifteen, I began to see in him great possibilities. In
personal beauty and strength he was beyond compare. His eyes were as
blue as an Italian sky, and his hair fell in a mass of tawny curls to
his shoulders. His mother likened him to a young lion. Mentally he was
slow, but his judgment was clear and accurate. Above all, he was honest,
and knew not fear of man, beast, or devil. His life in Styria, hedged
about by ceremonious conventions, had given him an undue portion of
dignity and reticence, but that could easily be polished down by
friction with the rougher side of the world. Except myself and his
mother, he had never known a real friend.

To Max the people of the world were of two conditions: a very small
class to whom he must kneel, and a very large number who must kneel to
him. Even his mother addressed him publicly as "My Lord Count." On rare
occasions, in the deep privacy of her closet, mother-love would get the
better of her and break through the crust of ceremony. Then she indulged
herself and him in the ravishing, though doubtful, luxury of calling him
"Little Max." No one but I, and perhaps at rare intervals Duke
Frederick, ever witnessed this lapse from dignity on the part of Her
Grace, and we, of course, would not expose her weakness to the world.

This love-name clung to Max, and "Little Max," though somewhat