'Perhaps, if your Highness spoke with Serenissimus things might change,'

counselled Madame de Stafforth, and the d.u.c.h.ess prayed for strength to conquer the fortress of vice, Ludwigsburg. 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess'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 d.u.c.h.ess'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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 ama.s.sment of a group of giant red-brown tortoises; the thousand large windows glinting in the sunshine, the stately gardens. The d.u.c.h.ess 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 turning their smiling faces towards the gardens, the palace, and--the Landhofmeisterin.

All this, then, Eberhard Ludwig had raised to honour the whim of a courtesan, of an unknown adventuress from Mecklemburg, while she, the d.u.c.h.ess, legal wife, princess of a n.o.ble house--she was shut out, banished to a grim haunted castle in a deserted town! She wrung her hands together. She was helpless, hopeless.

Several courtiers, lingering in the street, stared curiously at the shabby coach. One of the French dressmakers, hurrying from the palace, stood stock still in surprise at seeing so inelegant an equipage in the street of magnificent 'Louisbourg.' The d.u.c.h.ess, with the morbid sensitiveness of a deeply wounded, slighted woman, winced under the scornful inspection of the pert little dressmaker.

Now the coach entered the first gate of the palace, and once more the outrider was obliged to proclaim and a.s.sure the ident.i.ty of the carriage's occupant. This time the sentry flatly refused to believe him, and it was necessary to call the Captain of the Guard. Here the d.u.c.h.ess's spirit a.s.serted itself. She summoned the Captain to the door of the coach and haughtily bid him admit her immediately. But the Captain, a youth appointed by the Gravenitz, feared her Excellency's displeasure more than G.o.d or man, and though he was gentleman enough to treat the d.u.c.h.ess courteously, he begged her to wait while he repaired to the Landhofmeisterin for instructions. No one was admitted to the palace without permission from her Excellency, he said.

The d.u.c.h.ess inquired if Madame de Ruth was in the castle. At least, she hoped that for the sake of old memories the grande Maitresse du Palais, 'Dame de Deshonneur,' as she had once named her, would have sufficient humanity to help her now. Madame de Ruth was in the castle, the Captain replied, but she was very old and infirm, and he feared to disturb her afternoon rest. Very old and infirm? The d.u.c.h.ess sighed. Ah! many years had pa.s.sed since she had seen the garrulous lady. Alas! she was no longer young herself. G.o.d in heaven! why did that sinful, triumphant wanton alone retain her beauty? She had been told that the Landhofmeisterin, like some evil giant tree, seemed to grow more beautiful, more resplendent each year. It was not true; for Time had set his cruel fingermarks upon Wilhelmine, but her wonderful health and her complaisant knowledge of success gave her a seeming youth. True, the pert little French dressmaker could have told the d.u.c.h.ess of violent scenes over gowns made to the measurements of former years, which could not fit her Excellency; but the courtesan pays a homage to Venus, offering up the tribute of powder, paint, and gorgeous clothes, and Venus responds by a gift of seeming youth; while the virtuous woman is punished for her virtue and her neglect of the G.o.ddess of Appearance, by a shorter span of beauty and youth. Yet there is an unerring justice in the world. When Time has worked his inexorable will, and powder, paint, and crafty clothing can no longer hide his ravages, then the virtuous woman triumphs, probably for the first time in her life. They are both old, she and the courtesan, but she is sometimes beautiful--old, grey, and sere, but venerable, charming--and little children love her, and younger women bring their troubles--ay, and their joys, reverently to her, feeling a benediction in the touch of the pure, withered hand. While the courtesan--alas! a ridiculous garish absurdity, a grim ghost of past merriment, a horrid relic of forgotten debauches, a painted harridan at whom the boys jeer when she pa.s.ses down the street. Here is one of G.o.d's great judgments and one of Nature's object-lessons.

But Johanna Elizabetha did not think of all this as she sat waiting at the gates of Ludwigsburg Palace; her mind was centred upon the probability of Madame de Ruth's kind heart prompting her to a.s.sist her erstwhile mistress. The minutes dragged on. Old and infirm, he had said; perhaps she came slowly down the stairs? Ah! at last! the d.u.c.h.ess heard the well-remembered voice in the distance talking ceaselessly. Then she saw Madame de Ruth, leaning on the arm of the Captain of the Guard, coming slowly towards her.

A deep courtesy, and Madame de Ruth stood at the coach door. In a tremulous voice the d.u.c.h.ess informed her that she would speak with Serenissimus on urgent business, but that the guard refused her admittance and she had therefore begged her to come to her a.s.sistance.

'Aha! your Highness craves the a.s.sistance of a Dame de Deshonneur? Nay,'

she added in a gentler tone, 'I fear I have not the power to admit your Highness save to my own apartments.'

The d.u.c.h.ess bent forward. 'Madame de Ruth,' she said solemnly, 'you are an old woman and so am I; we have not many years before G.o.d judges us at His Eternal Tribunal. I pray you, by your hope of His mercy, to have mercy on me, help me this once.'

Madame de Ruth looked at her; indeed, the d.u.c.h.ess's tragic face was enough to soften even a harder heart than beat under the old courtesan's padded, beribboned corsage.

'Well, your Highness, come with me! I will endeavour to summon Serenissimus to my apartments,' she said. 'It will not be easy, and I hope your Highness is prepared to offer me apartments in Stuttgart? I may require them after this! My friend the Landhofmeisterin is averse to any one being admitted to the palace without her permission.'

They pa.s.sed through a maze of long, lofty, pink marble walled corridors, and up several winding stone stairs, ere they reached Madame de Ruth's apartments. Here the old courtesan left her Highness, while she withdrew to make arrangements for the Duke to be summoned. In truth, she hastily despatched a billet to the Landhofmeisterin informing her of the extraordinary occurrence, and begging her for instructions. Even Madame de Ruth was under the Gravenitz's iron rule and dared not offend her. The curt answer came back written in her Excellency's energetic, elegant writing: 'How is her Highness's appearance?' Madame de Ruth replied equally curtly with the one word 'Hideous!' and a moment after the paper was returned to her: 'Let him see her.--Wilhelmine von Wurben und von Gravenitz, Landhofmeisterin.'

It was a curious interview between Eberhard Ludwig and his deserted wife; strained, unnatural, terrible, this meeting after long years, and insensibly they fell into their old att.i.tudes: he wearied, irritated, coldly courteous; she tearful, imploring, tiresome. He told her that she was nothing to him, and that she had no further claims upon him; he provided residence, appanage, everything to which she had a right. She responded that she claimed his love, his company, and in answer he bowed deeply and left her presence.

Madame de Ruth returning to her rooms found a fainting woman p.r.o.ne upon the floor, and to her credit be it written, she tended the d.u.c.h.ess gently. When her Highness recovered from her swoon she requested Madame de Ruth to lead her to the palace chapel.

'I would fain leave a prayer here! A foolish fancy, you will say, but the sorrowful are often foolish,' she said bitterly.

Madame de Ruth guided the d.u.c.h.ess through another maze of long corridors, and ushered her into the tapestried room which is behind the palace gallery. Her Highness gazed with displeasure at the luxurious furnishing of the Ducal pew, its gilded armchairs, red silk cushions, soft red silk praying ha.s.socks, and the gilt cas.e.m.e.nt looking down into the church.

The church itself, designed by the Italian Papist, Frisoni, showed a wealth of delicate pink brocade and of rich azure hangings, of golden angels, of smiling G.o.ddesses whose voluptuous faces bore so unmistakable a likeness to the Landhofmeisterin. With a sigh the d.u.c.h.ess fell on her knees. 'G.o.d is everywhere,' she reminded herself, 'even in this frivolous chapel.' She prayed earnestly for some time, and, rising, would have turned to go, when her eye was caught by a finely sculptured medallion, placed high up to the right of the much gilded and ornamented pulpit. Its subject was Truth, and this severe personage stood represented by a charming shepherdess with rose-wreathed mirror, and flower-bedecked, coquettish hat, bare breast, and a skirt which, for no particular reason unless it were the showing of the model's beautiful limbs, suddenly fell on one side from the hip to the ankle of this remarkable figure of Truth.

Here again the face was unmistakable, and the sculptor had taken immense pains to make this medallion a masterly portrait of the Landhofmeisterin.

With a gesture of despair and disgust the d.u.c.h.ess turned away and hurried through the corridors. Placing her hand on Madame de Ruth's arm she pressed her guide forward at so rapid a pace that the older woman almost fell.

'Quick, Madame! quick, Madame! take me from this terrible place!' the d.u.c.h.ess repeated. It seemed to her that Wilhelmine's face, her triumphant beauty, pursued her at every yard of the Sinner's Palace. Even in the church she knew that each figure, feigning to beautify the House of G.o.d, was in reality merely another homage to the great mistress, another subtle compliment of the architect Frisoni's for the Landhofmeisterin.

Madame de Ruth accompanied her Highness to her coach, and in broken words the d.u.c.h.ess thanked her. 'If Fate turns against you here, Madame, you will find a welcome at Stuttgart in memory of your kindness on this most miserable day,' she said. But Madame de Ruth shook her head. She was of the Ludwigsburg world, and when Frivolity forgot her she knew that she would need no other refuge than six foot of earth beside her dead child.

Wearily the d.u.c.h.ess took her way homeward. There was no spark of hope left in her heart now; she only raged that she had humbled herself, and to no avail. The magnificence of Ludwigsburg smote her as an insult. She shuddered at the remembrance of the endless reproductions of her enemy's features: the whole palace was a marble homage to the Gravenitz, a beautiful, enduring, kingly homage.

But the palace chapel! Ah! that was the worst of all, a very blasphemy.

And yet how wondrous beautiful it was, this palace.

She closed her eyes, but in the darkness she saw again the smiling face of the woman who had ruined her life; she saw the graceful figure in the chapel medallion, the voluptuous parted lips of the carven angel who held the canopy over the pulpit, the delicately chiselled features of the Aphrodites and the nymphs which she had been forced to pa.s.s in the palace, and each one of which bore a resemblance to the Duke's mistress.

The sun was setting behind Hohenasperg, and a blood-red glow lingered in the sky over the south-westerly hills of the Rothwald. The peasants were going homeward after their day's work; already their sickles had cut great gaping wounds in the waving, yellow beauty of the corn-fields. A fresh north breeze sprang up and sent the white dust whirling in clouds behind the d.u.c.h.ess's coach. And the north wind brought Johanna Elizabetha another pang, for it wafted to her a sound of music from Ludwigsburg. The musicians of the Silver Guards were playing a merry strain in the palace gardens.

To the forsaken, humiliated woman this moment was symbolic of her whole life: she journeying alone down the dusty road towards the gathering gloom over Stuttgart; Eberhard Ludwig and the Landhofmeisterin at their beautiful palace living in music and revelry.

CHAPTER XIX

THE GREAT TRIUMPH AND THE SHADOW

FOR years Germany had gossiped over the so-called 'Persian Court' of Leopold Eberhard of Wirtemberg, Duke of Mompelgard. This prince had been so pampered by his mother, Anne de Coligny, that he reached the age of twelve years without having learned to read or write. When the over-tender mother died, the boy's father, Duke George, took his dunce-son's education in hand; but this gentleman was peculiar in his notions of the training of young minds. French and German he deemed unnecessary trivialities, and the Christian religion a ba.n.a.lity. Instead of these prosaic lessons the boy was instructed in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian tongues, and, in lieu of the Bible, the Koran was placed in his hands.

A handsome, reckless, pa.s.sionate youth, imbued with the comfortable theories of polygamy, Leopold Eberhard was destined to succeed his father in the family honours, and achieve a course of Persian living which, while practised frequently under other names at many courts, astounded Germany by this legalised manner of illegality.

One lady was already the wife of Leopold Eberhard. She was the daughter of a baker, and had held the post of housemaid at the small court of Oels in Silesia. Having succeeded in espousing a gentleman of the name of Zedlitz, she turned her attention to the eighteen-year-old Erbprinz of Mompelgard; and her husband, Herr von Zedlitz, not approving of this new relationship, she divorced him and married Leopold. At first this undistinguished alliance displeased the old Duke of Mompelgard, and he endeavoured to disinherit Leopold Eberhard; but when the ex-housemaid bore a fine son, the grandfather relented, and the couple took residence at Mompelgard, the lady being created by the Emperor Countess of Sponeck.

Now, in Mompelgard resided an aged captain of the Imperial army, one Richard Curie, a tailor by trade, who, having enlisted in the army and risen to the rank of captain, changed his uneuphonious name to Monsieur l'Esperance, married a Mompelgard butcher's daughter, and settled in her native town. Four fine daughters were born of this marriage. Leopold Eberhard cast his eyes upon these beautiful girls and remembered his Mahometan principles. At this juncture, Duke George conveniently died, and Leopold Eberhard became Duke. Immediately all four damsels l'Esperance were appointed ladies' companions to the Countess of Sponeck.

The eldest, Sebastiane, was the first object of Leopold's affection, but the Countess Sponeck suspected the intrigue and remonstrated with her spouse. To divert her jealousy from Sebastiane the Duke paid sham court to the youngest sister, Polyrene, but the playacting turned reality, and ended in serious pa.s.sion. However, this episode with the second of the l'Esperances soon came to an end, for Polyrene fell dead during a gavotte at court. Great mourning, and Leopold sought consolation with another sister l'Esperance, Henriette Hedwig, wife of a lieutenant in the Mompelgard guards, Herr von Sandersleben. This gentleman objected, divorced Henriette Hedwig, and left the Duke's service.

The Countess of Sponeck and the two sisters Esperance resided under one roof. We are told that it was h.e.l.l on earth: they fought, they scratched, they yelled, they bit, till the Duke arrived on the scene, parted the combatants, and usually thrashed--the Countess of Sponeck! All Germany knew, watched, and laughed.

At length it could be borne no longer, and the Countess of Sponeck, with her children, retired to a distant castle. Then Henriette Hedwig died, and the Mompelgard court seemed tidied up a little, although Henriette left five children in the castle, two of whom called Leopold father.

But there still remained a fourth sister Esperance, Elizabeth Charlotte.

This lady's ambition soared higher than that of the other three sisters.

She made Leopold divorce the Countess of Sponeck. The other sisters had been called the legal wives of the Duke, according to his Mahometan principles, but Elizabeth Charlotte insisted upon a greater surety, and Leopold acquiesced, as usual, when his affections were engaged. The Countess of Sponeck being divorced, he married the fourth and last sister Esperance. He spoke of poor Sponeck as 'The Widowed Lady,' and Elizabeth Charlotte as 'The Reigning Lady.'

Now came the complications concerning the offspring of the Duke's various wives. To annoy poor Sponeck, Leopold in 1715 had entered into a contract with Wirtemberg, whereby he declared his distant cousin, Eberhard Ludwig, heir to Mompelgard; but he soon repented of this admission, and besought the Emperor to legitimatise his children: those morganatically born by the Countess of Sponeck, and the rest of the brood from the Esperance sisters. The Emperor refused.

Then Leopold appealed to Louis XIV., who also proved obdurate. Finally during the Regency, Leopold repaired to Paris in person and prayed the Regent, Duc d'Orleans, to legitimatise his progeny. 'A Lutheran prince was legally permitted to marry whom, when, and as often as he wished,' he averred. This precept being received with mockery, he expatiated on Persian customs, and declared himself a believer in the Koran alone. But Paris laughed at him, and after making himself ridiculous at the court of France during eight months, Leopold returned to Mompelgard. Then he married his son, George Leopold, Count of Sponeck, to his daughter Eleonore Charlotte of Sandersleben; and his son, Karl Leopold of Sandersleben, to his daughter Leopoldine Eberhardine of Sponeck. This double marriage was a magnificent ceremony at Mompelgard, and Duke Leopold was wild with delight at the revival of 'the beautiful old Persian custom.' But Germany, and even France, stood aghast at the horrible affair. To celebrate his four children's nuptials, Leopold gave a grand ball. In the midst of this festivity he was struck down with apoplexy. The sisters Esperance, Sebastiane and Elizabeth Charlotte, fled before the approach of death, but honest Sponeck hastened back from her distant castle, and Leopold died in her arms.

Eberhard Ludwig of Wirtemberg laid claim to Mompelgard, but he was obliged to send troops to seize his inheritance. Then the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in a body commenced legal proceedings against the rightful heir, and against each other. Europe looked on, scandalised and amused.

The eldest Sponeck and his sister-bride hurried to Paris--'Prince et Princesse de Montbeliard,' they styled themselves--and as they were young, handsome, and seemingly wealthy, many persons of note espoused their sorry cause.

Eberhard Ludwig, who now added to his t.i.tles that of Duke of Mompelgard, waited patiently for some time ere he took possession in person of his new domain. His troops were there, and Friedrich Gravenitz had been despatched to take direction of affairs.

Meanwhile, some of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were raising doleful cries in Vienna and in Paris, but a few remained obstinately at Mompelgard, and to Friedrich Gravenitz was a.s.signed the task of removing them before Serenissimus made his state entry.