'Yes, your Excellency, and if it were to be my last word on earth.'
The Grävenitz looked at him fixedly for a moment; after all, she rather admired his intrepidity.
'Your audience is at an end,' she said haughtily, and bowed slightly as though she were really some rightful sovereign dismissing a froward courtier.
The Prelate returned her salute equally slightly, and turning away with a sigh, he left her presence.
In later years the estimable man was wont to aver he had never been so near to insulting a woman, yet he would add:
'But she was great in her very wickedness! Surely she must have been one of the angels fallen from Heaven and apprenticed in Hell! for of a truth she was in evil as compared with ordinary sinners, what in holiness is a saint compared with ordinary good people. A wonderful woman, alas!'
Ah, Osiander, did she leave some clinging fragrance, some spark of her subtle charm, to tingle for ever through your pure, simple soul?
In 1716 the Erbprinz Friedrich Ludwig had espoused Henriette Marie of Brandenburg-Schwedt, a pretty and most correct Princess who possessed, among other graceful talents, a perfect genius for tasteful dressing. The marriage festivities had not taken place at Stuttgart, in order to avoid the obvious complications of the meeting of the bridegroom's parents. The Erbprinz hardly knew his father, for Eberhard Ludwig had permitted him to remain chiefly with the Duchess in Stuttgart. At least the unfortunate Johanna Elizabetha was granted the happiness of watching over her gentle, sickly son. The boy had led a dull life enough in deserted Stuttgart, and his natural aptitude for music and study had thus found free scope. Immediately after his marriage, however, he was commanded to reside at Ludwigsburg, where a fine suite of apartments was prepared for him and his bride.
Friedrich Ludwig protested that he desired to remain in Stuttgart, but the Landhofmeisterin willed it otherwise, and Serenissimus enforced her will.