tticoats.
Ridiculous things, women.'

Serenissimus endeavoured to lead the shouting monarch from the orangery,
but he was not to be outdone.

'Come to Berlin, boy; fine uniforms, good beer, and tobacco. Come, you
will love me like your father!' he yelled at the tallest gardener,
bestowing a heavy blow on the youth's shoulders with the stout cudgel
which he always carried. The end of it was that Eberhard Ludwig made him
a present of the Landhofmeisterin's gardeners, and the King in high good
humour retired to take an hour's nap before starting to enjoy some
wild-boar sticking in the forest.

All that day the Landhofmeisterin did not see Serenissimus, only in the
afternoon she received a billet from him in which he forbade her to
attend the supper in the state banqueting-hall. 'The Erbprincessin will
be the only lady; she, being the King's cousin, must attend, but I
command you to remain away. You will understand my reasons when you
consider the events of this morning.--E. L.'

The letter was short, formal, cold in tone, and the Landhofmeisterin was
deeply wounded. She had known that Friedrich Wilhelm would be unfriendly
to her; his rough virtue, and hatred of illicit relationships, were
famous throughout Germany, and she was aware that he would view with
displeasure the magnificence and the French manners of Ludwigsburg. Had
he not stamped, beaten, and roared out of existence every trace of the
elegance and pomp of the Berlin court as it had been under his father,
Friedrich I.?--that monarch who, by the way, had granted the Graevenitz
that Letter of Royal Protection twenty years ago.

Still, though Friedrich Wilhelm had refused to ratify or acknowledge this
document when begged to do so by the Duke of Zollern, the
Landhofmeisterin had counted him as more or less bound by it, and the
idea that he could utterly ignore her had never entered her head.
Moreover, she thought she would not need the protection of Prussia. She
had prepared a vast fortune out of Wirtemberg, and if death claimed
Eberhard Ludwig before her own demise, she intended to retire to
Schaffhausen and finish her days in magnificent seclusion. Yet it was
infinitely galling to be hidden away in this manner. She raged at the
thought of the courtiers' sneers. Not attend the supper? She, the ruler
of Ludwigsburg and Wirtemberg, to be hidden like a common mistress! And
then how coldly Eberhard Ludwig wrote to her. 'Alas! all things pass,'
she said, and wept