o a court; she was purveyor of
amusements to a great prince; yet she had lost the faculty to understand
that this prince agonised because she was too occupied to give him
tenderness. Passion she gave him, and brilliant gaiety; she tyrannised,
flattered, charmed, cajoled him, what more could he desire? Only, he
dreamed of the impossible; he dreamed of the love and friendship which
remain, of the roses and kisses which do not fade and lose their savour.
Of course, it was impossible; but from a dream's non-fulfilment a tragedy
was preparing. The tragedy of satiety and inevitable disappointment.

* * * * *

All Wirtemberg was in the Landhofmeisterin's grasp, but two things
disturbed her entire enjoyment of power: the continued residence of
Johanna Elizabetha in Stuttgart, and the unrelenting disapproval of the
Evangelical Church towards the unholy court of Ludwigsburg.

The Catholic Church, through Zollern, coquetted with the Landhofmeisterin
in the hope of winning Wirtemberg's allegiance by her influence. But the
Protestant community, headed by Prelate Osiander, was openly hostile. The
Landhofmeisterin, piqued by this, made overtures offering to endow
orphanages, schools, and to repair churches; but though the Church, after
the manner of Churches, swallowed the gold greedily, still it refused to
swallow the Landhofmeisterin so long as she remained in deadly and open
sin.

To oust the Duchess was impossible; therefore it was deemed sufficient
that she should be deserted and apparently forgotten, and surely in time
the Church would permit itself to be mollified, and if cajolery failed,
the Graevenitz dreamed of using the well-worn threat of Roman conversion.
Meanwhile she was ruler of the land, and she thought it preposterous that
in the State Church services her great name went unmentioned in the
prayers to God for the salvation of Wirtemberg's ruler. The Duke was
induced to intimate to Osiander his wish that the Landhofmeisterin should
be prayed for when they interceded for himself. Osiander treated this
request with contempt, and returned no answer. Then the matter rested for
two years, and it seemed as though both the Duke and his mistress had
forgotten it.

One day Osiander was summoned to Ludwigsburg. He could not refuse to obey
the ruler of his country, and though he suspected the summons to be in
truth from the Landhofmeisterin, it was signed and sealed by Eberhard
Ludwig. So the P