ss's departure caused angry consternation in
Stuttgart. Johanna Elizabetha wept, but the Duchess-mother raged. She had
fancied that her son, deeply obliged to her for her generous action of
the war indemnity, would listen to her reasonable voice as a reward.

'Ridiculous!' _he_ argued. 'I never asked her to pay the indemnity; if
she chooses to do so, well and good, but it does not bind me to
obedience.'

There is a pathetic letter from the Duchess-mother to her son, a
dignified epistle with a very human postscriptum, wherein bubbles over a
mother's hatred for her son's seducer, the honest woman's furious disdain
of the triumphant charm of an adventuress.

'MON FILS,--Si j'ai delivre le pays du fleau francois j'attends
que vous delivriez la Cour du fleau de votre peche. Revenez a
Stuttgard et faites votre devoir de mari, de pere, de fils et de
Prince Chretien. Vous redonnerez la paix a votre mere,

'MAGDALENE SYBILLE, PRINCESSE DE HESSE DARMSTADT,
'DUCHESSE DOUAIRIERE DE WIRTEMBERG.

'Cette Graevenitz est une p----! J'aurois des preuves si je
voulois les donner; je vous prie de me croire qu'elle ne merite
pas votre faveur!'

Possibly, had the Duchess-mother denied herself the satisfaction of
writing this postscriptum, Eberhard Ludwig might indeed have returned to
Stuttgart for a time, and who can tell how a man's fancy may vary in a
few months? But being a lover and a chivalrous gentleman, the
unfortunate paragraph roused him to a white heat of championship for his
mistress. What! she 'une p----?' Ah! how evil was the world! No man, and,
above all, no woman, could understand Wilhelmine. She was grossly
misjudged, cruelly persecuted. Thus, when he read this letter from his
mother (which reached him when he was starting for Switzerland), he only
shrugged his shoulders angrily, and crushing the missive into his saddle
holster, spurred his horse forward, and galloped southward to the
calumniated lady of his heart.

Wilhelmine had passed a solitary two months at Schaffhausen. Zollern's
castle stood on the left bank of the Rhine, overlooking the great
waterfall, whose delicious thunder had soothed her to calmer thoughts.
She passed the long hours in reading and making music, and the peaceful
days had added brilliancy to her splendid healthfulness. Thus, when
Eberhard Ludwig came to Schaffhausen, he found her an even more forceful,
vital, fresh-skinned