He was too proud to sue for popularity, and too great a despiser of men to attach any importance to their judgment.
The Archduke's antipathy to Hungary runs like a scarlet thread through the political chain of his thoughts.

I have been told that at the time when the Crown Prince Rudolf was frequently in Hungary shooting, the Archduke was often with him, and that the Hungarian gentlemen took a pleasure in teasing and ridiculing the young Archduke in the presence and to the delight of the considerably older Crown Prince.

Ready as I am to believe that the Crown Prince Rudolf enjoyed the jokes--and little do I doubt that there were men there who would act in such fashion so as to curry favour with the Crown Prince--I still think that these unpleasant incidents in his youth weighed less in the balance with Franz Ferdinand than the already-mentioned occurrences during his illness.
Apart from his personal antipathies, which he transferred from a few Hungarians to the entire nation, there were also various far-reaching and well-founded political reasons which strengthened the Archduke in his antagonistic relations with Hungary.

Franz Ferdinand possessed an exceptionally fine political _flair_, and this enabled him to see that Hungarian policy was a vital danger to the existence of the whole Habsburg Empire.

His desire to overthrow the predominance of the Magyars and to help the nationalities to obtain their rights was always in his thoughts, and influenced his judgment on all political questions.