s
caused the rooms to be swept and garnished, ere she entered, as though
they were infected with the pest. 'So they are,' quoth this
plain-speaking dame, 'with the pest of vice!'

It is to be supposed that the Duchess-mother was right in her surmise
regarding her son's forest wanderings, for a messenger arrived from Urach
saying Serenissimus would re-enter Stuttgart with his mother in a few
days' time; which he did, and was solemnly and publicly reconciled to the
Duchess Johanna Elizabetha. The grateful burghers voted their Duke a free
present of forty thousand gulden on his return, and to his Duchess ten
thousand gulden.

The Duchess-mother is reported to have remarked that, of a truth, it had
been fitting had they paid her back a portion of the war indemnity. 'But
it does not matter,' she said, 'so long as that absurd boy, my son
Eberhard, remains at his duties in future.' Dear, proud, sensible old
lady! God rest her well! To her mother's heart, the thirty-seven-year-old
Duke of Wirtemberg, hero, traveller, incidentally bigamist, remained
eternally 'that absurd boy, my son.'

* * * * *

It was with mingled feelings that Wilhelmine at Schaffhausen heard of
Eberhard Ludwig's reconciliation with his wife. Anger and scorn of the
man's weakness predominated, but despair and humiliation tortured her as
well, and a profound discouragement, which the sound of the rushing,
foaming Rhine falls had no power to sooth this time. The enforced
inaction was terrible to her. It was her strategy to leave his Highness's
passionate letters of excuse and explanation unanswered, and thus she had
little wherewith to fill the long summer days. Madame de Ruth was a
delightful companion, but Wilhelmine was unresponsive and seemed absorbed
in some intricate calculation. She would sit for hours, brooding
sombrely. Her eyes, narrowed and serpent-like, gazed at the rushing
waters, but when Madame de Ruth remarked on the beauty of the scene she
would answer irritably that she was occupied, and only begged for quiet
in which to think. Towards the middle of August Schuetz arrived from
Vienna. He brought with him a document which he prayed Wilhelmine to
consider, and to sign if she approved. It was entitled 'Revers de
Wilhelmine, Comtesse Graevenitz,' and set forth that she undertook to
relinquish all claims upon the Duke of Wirtemberg and his heirs forever.
That she recognised any child, born of her relationship to