ad of the
Church in Wurtemberg) flatly refused to have her name inserted in the
Public Prayers; 'Is not she already prayed for?' said Osiander: 'Do we
not say, DELIVER US FROM EVIL?' said the indignant Protestant man. And
there is one other person that never will comply with her: the lawful
Wife of Eberhard Ludwig. Serene Lady, she has had a sad existence of it;
the voice of her wrongs audible, to little purpose, this long while, in
Heaven and on Earth. But it is not in the power of reward or punishment
to bend her female will in the essential point: 'Divorce, your Highness?
When _I_ am found guilty, yes. Till then, never, your Highness, never,
never,' in steady CRESCENDO tone:--so that his Highness is glad to
escape again, and drop the subject. On which the Serene Lady again falls
silent. Gravenitz, in fact, hopes always to be wedded with the right,
nay were it only with the left hand: and this Serene Lady stands like
a fateful monument irremovably in the way. The Serene Lady steadily
inhabits her own wing of the Ducal House, would not exchange it for
the Palace of Aladdin; looks out there upon the grand equipages, high
doings, impure splendors of her Duke and his Gravenitz with a clear-eyed
silence, which seems to say more eloquently than words, 'MENE, MENE, YOU
are weighed!' In the land of Wurtemberg, or under the Sun, is no reward
or punishment that can abate this silence. Speak of divorce, the
answer is as above: leave divorce lying, there is silence looking forth
clear-eyed from that particular wing of the Palace, on things which the
gods permit for a time.
"Clear-eyed silence, which, as there was no abating of it, grew at last
intolerable to the two sinners. 'Let us remove,' said the Gravenitz,
'since her Serene Highness will not: build a new charming Palace,--say
at our Hunting Seat, among those pleasant Hills in the Waiblingen
region,--and take the Court, out thither.' And they have done so, in
these late bad years; taking out with them by degrees all the Courtier
Gentry, all the RATHS, Government Boards, public businesses; and
building new houses for them, there. ["From 1727 to 1730" was this
latter removal. A hunting-lodge, of Eberhard Ludwig's building,
and named by him LUGWIGSBURG, stood here since 1705; nucleus of the
subsequent palace, with its "Pheasantries," its "Favoritas," &c. &c. The
place had originally been monastic (Busching, _Erdbeschreibung,_ vi.
1519).] Founding, in fact, a second Capital for
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