Her words had started Wilhelmine on a new track of thought. Married to a courtier holding high office at court, she could return and resume her career. But that would declare her marriage with Eberhard Ludwig to be a farce, she reflected. Still, if this were the only way? In her mental vision she reviewed each courtier, but she could find none fitting for the position of husband in name. Schütz perhaps? She laughed at the very idea. No; the bridegroom must be a man of much breeding and no morals.
She wrote to Schütz requesting him to journey to Schaffhausen on important business. The attorney arrived, and Wilhelmine observed how shabby was his coat, how rusty his general appearance. He was again the pettifogging lawyer in poor circumstances, and Wilhelmine reflected that he would be all the more anxious to serve her in order to return to his ill-gotten splendour at her illegitimate court.
Schütz responded eagerly to her proposal. He acclaimed her a marvel of intelligence, and assured her that in Vienna he would be able to find the very article—a ruined nobleman ready to sell his name to any bidder.
On the day following Schütz's advent at Schaffhausen, Wilhelmine was surprised by a visit from her brother Friedrich, who arrived in a deeply injured mood. Since Wilhelmine left Urach, he averred, he had been treated in a manner all unfitting for an Oberhofmarshall, and the head of the noble family of Grävenitz. Serenissimus had paid him scant attention, and Stafforth had been reinstated as Hofmarshall to the Duchess Johanna Elizabetha—a brand new dignity, complained this Oberhofmarshall of a sham court. He made himself mighty disagreeable to his sister, varying his behaviour by outbursts of despair and noisy self-pity, which would have been laughable had they not been so loud, violent, and disturbing. Wilhelmine informed him of her plan, and after many expressions of disapproval, when she had made it clear to him that it would be entirely to his advantage if she succeeded in her design, he gave the ugly plan his brotherly blessing and his sanction as head of the family.
Hereupon Schütz returned to Vienna to seek a bridegroom. In an astonishingly short time, he wrote that he had found an admirably adapted person in the Count Joseph Maria Aloysius Nepomuk von Würben, a gentleman of very old lineage, and ex-owner of a dozen castles in Bohemia, all of which, however, had gradually been converted into gulden, and the gold pieces, in their turn, had vanished into the recollection of many lost card games. This personage, owing to his sad misfortunes, found himself at the age of sixty inhabiting a garret in Vienna.
Schütz wrote that he knew Monsieur le Comte well. They met constantly at the eating-house. He further assured her that Würben was a very pleasant companion. Wilhelmine replied that it was profoundly indifferent to her whether her future husband was an agreeable companion or not, as she intended only to see him once—viz., at her own marriage, after which ceremony he could follow his namesake St. Nepomuk into the waves of the Moldau, for aught she cared! It angered her that Schütz wrote concerning Würben, as though he were in truth to be the companion of her life, and she winced under a new note of familiarity which had crept into the attorney's tone.
Friedrich Grävenitz, who had taken up his abode in Wilhelmine's house at Schaffhausen, made matters worse by what he conceived to be witty and subtle pleasantries. He was never done with his allusions to 'mon cher futur beau frère à Vienne,' and he playfully called his sister 'la petite fiancée.'
On a golden evening of late September, Würben, accompanied by Schütz, arrived at Schaffhausen. Wilhelmine and Madame de Ruth saw the coach crawling up the steep incline which led to the little castle that Zollern had given to the favourite. With difficulty Madame de Ruth had induced Wilhelmine to offer her future husband one day's hospitality. The wedding was fixed for the morning after Würben's arrival, and the bridegroom had agreed to return to Vienna immediately after the ceremony.
'I have the honour to present to you Monsieur le Comte de Würben!' said Schütz, as he ushered in the noble Bohemian. Würben bowed to the ground, and Wilhelmine and Madame de Ruth bent in grand courtesies.
'Delighted to see you, mon cher! Welcome to our family!' cried Friedrich Grävenitz ostentatiously, departing entirely from the ceremonious code of those days, which hardly permitted the nearest friends to greet each other in this informal manner. But Friedrich Grävenitz prided himself on his friendliness and geniality, and, like most genial persons, he constantly floundered into tactlessness and vulgarity. On this occasion his misplaced affability was received with undisguised disapproval. Madame de Ruth tapped him on the arm with her fan; Wilhelmine shot him a furious, snake-like glance; Würben himself looked surprised, and merely responded with a bow to the effusive speech. Schütz, of course, was the only one to whom it appeared natural, nay, correct. In his world geniality, translated into jocoseness, was indispensable before, during, and after a wedding—even at these scarcely usual nuptials!