gsburg. For years she hesitated.
Indeed, she felt it would be almost immodest to enter the Sinner's
Palace, but the day came when she decided to risk herself in the
endeavour to turn his Highness's heart back to purity--purity and
herself. She dressed herself in her sombre best and ordered her coach.
Madame de Stafforth volunteered for service, but the Duchess said she
would go alone. She was very brave and terribly afraid.

Through the waving, yellow corn-fields, bordered by fruit-trees for the
most part, or else lying like a narrow white riband in the midst of the
broad rich valley, the road wound from Stuttgart to the Erlachhof forest
and the palace of Ludwigsburg. It was early August when the Duchess
journeyed thither, and the corn stood high and golden in the hazy warmth
of the sunshine. Far away to the right the hills rose blue and veiled,
and to the left the grim fortress of Hohenasperg dominated the smiling,
fruitful plain with frowning menace. Johanna Elizabetha's eyes sought the
distant mound where she knew lay the prison fort; perchance Serenissimus
would answer her pleadings by imprisonment in that dark fastness.

Her coach lumbered slowly on. The Duchess's horses were old and little
used to work, and the journey seemed endless. At length the avenue
leading to the residence gates was reached, and in the cool shade of the
chestnut-trees the Duchess's courage returned. After all, it was her
right to enter any Wirtemberg palace, she told herself; yet a chill
foreboding gripped her. Should she turn back?

The coach came to a jolting halt, and she heard her outrider explaining
to the sentry at the gate that she was the Duchess journeying to the
palace. The man seemed doubtful, but after several minutes' parley the
little cortege of two outriders, an old shabby coach, two troopers of a
Wirtemberg regiment for escort (no Silver Guard here!), and a
heart-broken woman, was allowed to proceed.

The palace of Ludwigsburg lay in the August afternoon haze. Her
Highness's eyes wandered over the vast pile: the long, low orangery to
the south; the numerous rounded roofs of the palace which seemed like the
amassment of a group of giant red-brown tortoises; the thousand large
windows glinting in the sunshine, the stately gardens. The Duchess sighed
deeply as her coach rolled down the broad street which led to the palace
gates. She saw the fine houses which bordered this street on one side
only, like so many courtiers turni