: masques,
banquets, music, play-acting, dancing; and even foreign travellers
repaired to the South German court to view the brilliancies which
equalled those of Versailles before the pious, wanton Maintenon had
turned the palace into a house of prayer-meeting, strangely enough almost
Calvinistic in its gloom.

At Ludwigsburg the months flew by in a whirl of gaiety and elegant
revelry. The groans of an oppressed peasantry, the curses of an overtaxed
burgherdom, could not pierce through the chorus of merriment. Smaller
stars waxed and waned, favourites of a day disappeared, but the
Landhofmeisterin's power grew greater, and her ambition became each day
more tremendous. She was treated with royal honours, and the court
customs were so arranged that her kin should take precedency of all.

The news of Count Wuerben's death caused fresh alarms at Stuttgart, for it
was expected that the Countess would again endeavour to remove Johanna
Elizabetha and marry the Duke. But she had learned her lesson, and now
contented herself with her towering position as ruler and mistress. To
such a personage the minor detail of legal marriage seemed unimportant,
though Madame de Maintenon's example rankled in the mind of every royal
favourite.

The Landhofmeisterin believed her position to be unassailable, and if a
thought crossed her mind that all this power and pleasure depended upon
the will of a man and a Prince, that will which is so often better
spelled caprice, still she could not doubt that this one man, one Prince,
was constant and stable. From the force of love, of trust, of habit, and
of fear he would remain hers till death. And after his Highness's death?
For that she was prepared also. 'Gold is power,' she had said to Monsieur
Gabriel long ago at Guestrow, and she did not forget this precept. She
spent freely and magnificently, but she amassed an enormous fund in
reserve. No year passed without some beautiful property becoming
hers--broad acres of field and forest, entire villages, old and lordly
castles. To name but a few of these: Gochsheim, Welzheim, Brenz, Stetten
(the Duchess-mother's dower-house), Freudenthal, the Castle of Urach, and
the Chateau Joyeux La Favorite. Her treasury was well filled, for she
levied taxes in the Duke's name, and they flowed into her privy purse:
gold heavy with the curses of a people. Her dream of an empire where she
should hold secret dominion over the wealth and enterprise of a vast
Jewish co