mansion; such has been
the delightful labour which has gone to the telling of the true history
of the Graevenitz. The Land-despoiler the downtrodden peasantry and
indignant burghers named her, for they hated her as their sort must ever
hate the beautiful, elegant, haughty woman of the great world. They
called her sinner, which she was; and she called them canaille, which
they probably were.

And traces of all this linger in Wuerttemberg.[1] They still deem the
Countess Graevenitz a subject to be mentioned with bated breath--a thing
too evil, too terrible, for polite conversation. The very guides at
Ludwigsburg slur over her name, and if they go so far as to mention her,
they say: 'Ja, das war aber eine schlimme Dame,' and turn the talk to
something else. But her memory lives magnificently in the great palace
built for her, in her little 'Chateau Joyeux' of La Favorite, and in the
many beautiful properties which belonged to this extravagant
Land-despoiler. She came to Wuerttemberg when the country was at a low
financial ebb. Louis XIV. had preyed upon the land for years. Robber
raids they called these wars which he waged for trumped-up pretexts.
After these invasions came the war of the Spanish succession, and
Wuerttemberg lying on the high-road from France to Austria, the
belligerent armies swept over the Swabian land on their way to battle.
The Duke of Wuerttemberg, loyal to his Suzerain the Emperor at Vienna,
joined in the fray and fought bravely at the side of Marlborough and
Eugene of Savoy against the French terror. When Blenheim had been fought
and won, the war-tide swept northwards to the Netherlands, leaving
Southern Germany for the nonce at rest, and Eberhard Ludwig of
Wuerttemberg repaired to Stuttgart to attend to his Duchy's government.
Now began the love-story of his life, the long-drawn episode which made
his name a target for the gossip and scandal of early eighteenth-century
Germany; the episode which changed the simple, stiff family life of the
Wuerttemberg ducal circle to a brilliant, festive court, which travellers
tell us in their memoirs vied in magnificence with the glories of
Versailles itself.

M. H.

STUTTGART, 1905.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I. THE INTRIGUE, 1
II. THE AVE MARIA, 13
III. THE FIRST STEP, 27
IV. THE JOURNEY, 50
V. THE PLAY-ACTI