"'I remain your Highness's graciously until death,
"'Your Highness's Elector.
"'Ladenburg, April 15, 1652.'
"My answer was as follows:--
"'Most august Prince and high-born Lord,
"'From your Princely Highness's letter I have learnt with the greatest consternation that your Princely Highness is minded now to cast me off entirely, and never more to recognize me as your wife. I will commend my cause, woeful as it is, to God, the righteous judge. I will henceforth consider myself as a widow; whose husband still lives, led astray by a wanton worthless person, and drawn away from his lawful wife.
"'For the ample maintenance which your Princely Highness has ordered for me, I render you hearty thanks. I will also be careful so to behave myself to your Princely Highness's concubine that she shall have no cause to complain. Further, a nobleman from Stuttgart is here, who reports that in ten days his Serene Highness Prince Eberhard von Würtemberg, our dearly beloved lord cousin and brother, together with the lady his wife, are coming to visit us at Heidelberg. So your Princely Highness will undoubtedly come here, and arrange that they shall have right princely accommodation.
"'Datum Heidelberg, the 16th of April, 1657.
"'Your Princely Highness's until death, but now deeply afflicted lawful Electress of the Rhine.'
"After three days our lord and husband returned, bringing with him the von Degenfeld, under the escort of a hundred newly enlisted dragoons. Then indeed were we cut to the heart when we saw our former waiting-woman usurping our place and presented to every one as Electress, yet could not venture to say the least word against her. We kept a separate table, and had our own servants, and a body-guard of twenty cuirassiers appointed for our own selves.