He only puts a question to you in order to discover how far you are unable to answer him--it is a positive trap, the consequences of which you cannot possibly foresee.

Then he has a trick of sulking for a whole year without saying why; the merest trifle, a letter to him misdirected, is sufficient to upset him till his dying day.

If any one comes to see you when he is with you, and this somebody should be lower in rank than himself, and you should sin against the rules of etiquette by rising from your seat instead of merely bowing--Louis will lose his temper, and say that you have insulted him.
And yet he will never give any one a hint as to what is likely to offend him and what not." "Well, let us write under his name, 'a prickly gentleman.'" "And now comes Count Sarosdy, the _foispan._ He is a worthy, good-natured man, but a frightful aristocrat.

It delights him to do good to the peasants and the poor, but don't ask him to make the acquaintance of his fellow-men.

No tenantry in the whole of Hungary is better off than his, but he will not have a non-noble person in his service even as a clerk.