Henriette Marie played her part in this difficult position with dignity and well-bred tact. She was perfectly correct in her demeanour towards the Landhofmeisterin, yet she kept her at a distance and gently rebutted the mistress's friendly advances, and refused to notice her subsequent sneers. Twice during each week the Erbprincessin drove to Stuttgart to visit her unhappy mother-in-law, and she was careful to inform Serenissimus of every intended visit. 'Have I your Highness's permission to journey to Stuttgart?' and 'I thank your Highness, I shall start this afternoon.'
The Landhofmeisterin raged, but she was powerless against the Erbprincessin's quiet dignity and amiable, obstinate coldness. Then, too, Henriette Marie's wardrobe was a source of much annoyance to Wilhelmine; she feared the younger woman had finer gowns than she. In fine, it was the tragi-comedy of that painful jealousy of the woman approaching forty years for the youth of twenty summers.
The Erbprinz, however, could not resist the Landhofmeisterin's charm. She sang him to a very frenzy of delight; she assumed a tender, motherly anxiety over his delicate health—an anxiety which she made charmingly friendly; while she avoided the tiresome questions, the constant open observation, the galling reminders of his weakness in the presence of others, all that which poor, really tender, desperately anxious Johanna Elizabetha had done, wearying her son, shaming him with his physical delicacy.
The Erbprincessin bore a son in August 1718—a weakly child, the picture of his feeble father. The little life's flame flickered and shuddered through one bitter Wirtemberg winter, and in February 1719 passed away into the best sleep the baby had ever known.
Here again the Landhofmeisterin triumphed over Johanna Elizabetha. She knew how to console the Erbprinz with words of hope, how to turn his thoughts away from the empty gilded cradle where had lain that frail little being whom poor Friedrich Ludwig had loved with all his gentle heart. Alas! Johanna Elizabetha was too sad herself to be able to cheer sorrow, and she invariably met her stricken son with floods of tears, doleful questionings, torrents of lamentations, and he went back to Ludwigsburg—and the Landhofmeisterin—for consolation.
Thus things were fairly smooth at Ludwigsburg, and to Johanna Elizabetha it seemed like some wonderful, illicit heaven where her husband revelled and whence she was shut out. She sometimes dreamed of breaking into this Elysium, of expelling the regnant devil and rescuing Eberhard Ludwig. 'Perhaps, if your Highness spoke with Serenissimus things might change,' counselled Madame de Stafforth, and the Duchess prayed for strength to conquer the fortress of vice, Ludwigsburg. For years she hesitated. Indeed, she felt it would be almost immodest to enter the Sinner's Palace, but the day came when she decided to risk herself in the endeavour to turn his Highness's heart back to purity—purity and herself. She dressed herself in her sombre best and ordered her coach. Madame de Stafforth volunteered for service, but the Duchess said she would go alone. She was very brave and terribly afraid.
Through the waving, yellow corn-fields, bordered by fruit-trees for the most part, or else lying like a narrow white riband in the midst of the broad rich valley, the road wound from Stuttgart to the Erlachhof forest and the palace of Ludwigsburg. It was early August when the Duchess journeyed thither, and the corn stood high and golden in the hazy warmth of the sunshine. Far away to the right the hills rose blue and veiled, and to the left the grim fortress of Hohenasperg dominated the smiling, fruitful plain with frowning menace. Johanna Elizabetha's eyes sought the distant mound where she knew lay the prison fort; perchance Serenissimus would answer her pleadings by imprisonment in that dark fastness.
Her coach lumbered slowly on. The Duchess's horses were old and little used to work, and the journey seemed endless. At length the avenue leading to the residence gates was reached, and in the cool shade of the chestnut-trees the Duchess's courage returned. After all, it was her right to enter any Wirtemberg palace, she told herself; yet a chill foreboding gripped her. Should she turn back?
The coach came to a jolting halt, and she heard her outrider explaining to the sentry at the gate that she was the Duchess journeying to the palace. The man seemed doubtful, but after several minutes' parley the little cortège of two outriders, an old shabby coach, two troopers of a Wirtemberg regiment for escort (no Silver Guard here!), and a heart-broken woman, was allowed to proceed.
The palace of Ludwigsburg lay in the August afternoon haze. Her Highness's eyes wandered over the vast pile: the long, low orangery to the south; the numerous rounded roofs of the palace which seemed like the amassment of a group of giant red-brown tortoises; the thousand large windows glinting in the sunshine, the stately gardens. The Duchess sighed deeply as her coach rolled down the broad street which led to the palace gates. She saw the fine houses which bordered this street on one side only, like so many courtiers turning their smiling faces towards the gardens, the palace, and—the Landhofmeisterin.