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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
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