A German Pompadour Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Grävenitz, Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg

WILHELMINE walked on for some twenty minutes, the cold morning air bringing a bright colour to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes. Her gait was one of her greatest charms; it...

'Life is but a vision--what I see Of all which lives alone is life to me, And being so--the absent are the dead, Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread A dreary shroud aroun...

THE court of Stuttgart soon saw to its cost that Wilhelmine had of a truth 'come to stay this time,' as she herself had announced on the evening of her return from the Judengass...

FOR years Germany had gossiped over the so-called 'Persian Court' of Leopold Eberhard of Wirtemberg, Duke of Mömpelgard. This prince had been so pampered by his mother, Anne de...

FRIEDRICH WILHELM and his Highness of Wirtemberg started early on the morning after the state banquet. A number of wild boars had been tracked in the Kernen forest and good spor...

A HEAVY, leaden sky hung over the small town of Cannstatt, and the people looked with foreboding at the lowering black clouds, and the weather-wise foretold a furious thunder-st...

ON the morning following the masquerade, his Highness's Chief Officer of the Secret Service of Wirtemberg craved audience. The Secret Service had been instituted by Eberhard Lud...

FORSTNER'S fate worked marvels in the outward behaviour of the Wirtembergers. The strange scene upon the market-place lingered in their minds, and the actual loss which Forstner...

FIVE leagues north of Stuttgart, in the heart of the forest, stood the small hunting castle, the Erlachhof, whither Eberhard Ludwig often fled from the world and for many peacef...

THE news of the discovery of Ferrari in her Highness's apartments spread through Stuttgart during the evening, and there arose a wave of intense indignation. The Grävenitz was l...

A ROOM with rudely bulging plaster walls, once painted a harsh blue, now toned by time and damp to a hundred parti-coloured patches. A rough, uneven floor; for furniture a narro...

THE Imperial decree was uncompromising: 'She leaves your court, this adventuress, or ill betide her. If you take a mistress, well and good--that is not in the power of Emperor t...

AT eight of the clock on the evening of 15th May 1706, the main street of Stuttgart was crowded with a stream of coaches and foot-passengers. The cries of the running footmen: '...

MARÉCHAL LE DUC DE VILLARS was no brilliant, victorious hero, judged by the standard of a century which had seen such military geniuses as Turenne, as the great Condé, as Marlbo...

AFTER their marriage his Highness and the Countess of Urach took up their residence in the castle of Hohen-Tübingen, where Wilhelmine had wandered, a lonely stranger, on the mor...

EBERHARD LUDWIG stood before his dull Duchess, his eyes fixed on her heavy, handsome face with a look of such stern anger, that the unhappy woman felt herself to be a criminal b...

ON the outskirts of the village of Oberhausen in South Wirtemberg stands a deserted house. Rats are its only denizens now; rats and the 'poor ghosts,' so the peasants say. Two h...

THE new lady-in-waiting was installed in two rooms in the castle, very near the roof and hard by Madame de Ruth's apartment. Wilhelmine received a small income, also her food an...

NOW began for Wilhelmine a time of strangely mixed and contending emotions. She loved Eberhard Ludwig with all that fervour and lavish freshness which we give to our first love;...

A TRAVELLING coach and six horses thundered into Stuttgart, driven at a hand gallop, and raised clouds of white dust as it passed down the Graben. An escort of Silver Guards rod...

THERE is solace to the mourner in the sound of rushing waters; most of all can the stricken soul find a short oblivion in the ceaseless chant of the ocean's mighty surging; and...

'A queenly rose of sound, with tune for scent; A pause of shadow in a day of heat; A voice to make God weak as man, And at its pleadings take away the ban 'Neath which so long o...