Wurtemberg, with what
distress, sulky misery and disarrangement, to Stuttgard and the old
Capital, readers can fancy. There it stands, that Ludwigsburg, the
second Capital of Wurtemberg, some ten or twenty miles from Stuttgard
the first: a lasting memorial of Circe Gravenitz and her Ludwig. Has
not she, by her incantations, made the stone houses dance out hither?
It remains to this day a pleasant town, and occasional residence of
sovereignty. WAIBLINGEN, within an hour's ride, has got memorability
on other grounds;--what reader has not heard of GHIBELLINES, meaning
Waiblingens? And in another hour up the River, you will come to
Beutelsbach itself, where Ulrich with the Thumb had his abode (better
luck to him!), and generated this Lover of the Gravenitz, and much other
nonsense loud now and then for the last four centuries in the world!--

"There is something of abstruse in all these Beutelsbachers, from Ulrich
with the Thumb downwards: a mute ennui, an inexorable obstinacy; a
certain streak of natural gloom which no illumination can abolish.
Veracity of all kinds is great in them; sullen passive courage plenty
of it; active courage rarer; articulate intellect defective: hence a
strange stiff perversity of conduct visible among them, often marring
what wisdom they have;--it is the royal stamp of Fate put upon these
men. What are called fateful or fated men; such as are often seen on the
top places of the world, making an indifferent figure there. Something
of this, I doubt not, is concerned in Eberhard Ludwig's fascination; and
we shall see other instances farther down in this History.

"But so, for twenty years, the absurd Duke, transformed into a mere
Porcus by his Circe in that scandalous miraculous manner, has lived; and
so he still lives. And his Serene Wife, equally obstinate, is living at
Stuttgard, happily out of his sight now. One Son, a weakly man, who had
one heir, but has now none, is her only comfort. His Wife is a Prussian
Margravine (Friedrich Wilhelm's HALF-AUNT), and cultivates Calvinism in
the Lutheran Country: this Husband of hers, he too has an abstruse life,
not likely to last. We need not doubt 'the Fates' are busy, and the
evil demons, with those poor fellow-beings! Nay it is said the Circe is
becoming much of a Hecate now; if the bewitched Duke could see it. She
is getting haggard beyond the power of rouge; her mind, any mind she
has, more and more filled with spleen, malice, and the dregs of prid