Twice during each week the Erbprincessin drove to Stuttgart to
visit her unhappy mother-in-law, and she was careful to inform
Serenissimus of every intended visit. 'Have I your Highness's permission
to journey to Stuttgart?' and 'I thank your Highness, I shall start this
afternoon.'

The Landhofmeisterin raged, but she was powerless against the
Erbprincessin's quiet dignity and amiable, obstinate coldness. Then, too,
Henriette Marie's wardrobe was a source of much annoyance to Wilhelmine;
she feared the younger woman had finer gowns than she. In fine, it was
the tragi-comedy of that painful jealousy of the woman approaching forty
years for the youth of twenty summers.

The Erbprinz, however, could not resist the Landhofmeisterin's charm. She
sang him to a very frenzy of delight; she assumed a tender, motherly
anxiety over his delicate health--an anxiety which she made charmingly
friendly; while she avoided the tiresome questions, the constant open
observation, the galling reminders of his weakness in the presence of
others, all that which poor, really tender, desperately anxious Johanna
Elizabetha had done, wearying her son, shaming him with his physical
delicacy.

The Erbprincessin bore a son in August 1718--a weakly child, the picture
of his feeble father. The little life's flame flickered and shuddered
through one bitter Wirtemberg winter, and in February 1719 passed away
into the best sleep the baby had ever known.

Here again the Landhofmeisterin triumphed over Johanna Elizabetha. She
knew how to console the Erbprinz with words of hope, how to turn his
thoughts away from the empty gilded cradle where had lain that frail
little being whom poor Friedrich Ludwig had loved with all his gentle
heart. Alas! Johanna Elizabetha was too sad herself to be able to cheer
sorrow, and she invariably met her stricken son with floods of tears,
doleful questionings, torrents of lamentations, and he went back to
Ludwigsburg--and the Landhofmeisterin--for consolation.

Thus things were fairly smooth at Ludwigsburg, and to Johanna Elizabetha
it seemed like some wonderful, illicit heaven where her husband revelled
and whence she was shut out. She sometimes dreamed of breaking into this
Elysium, of expelling the regnant devil and rescuing Eberhard Ludwig.
'Perhaps, if your Highness spoke with Serenissimus things might change,'
counselled Madame de Stafforth, and the Duchess prayed for strength to
conquer the fortress of vice, Ludwi