Like his namesake he was a myth to his adherents. No ordinary earthly concerns tethered him: no wife, no lover, no family, no children, neither hobby nor recreation. He was not the liver of a life but the demon of an idea. At night he slept a few hours at his brother-in-law’s. The rest of his time he spent in the Belgrade Ministry of War, in an office whirring with telephone wires, telegraph keys, decoding devices, couriers arriving and departing. Restaurants and theaters did not exist for him. He was beyond normal frivolities. All his waking hours served one unmerciful passion: to carve Greater Serbia out of the rotting body of the Habsburg Empire.

Frederic Morton, Thunder at twilight: Vienna 1913/1914, New York, 1989, p. 208