placed at her bedside. " The good eating and
drinking," said the baron, "is the body of these
really charming evenings, gaiety their soul. The
duchess has two bells close to her: the one
gives the order to bring in champagne, the other
Hungarian wine. As soon as the first service
is brought in, the pages and footmen leave, and
are recalled only to change the plates. Scarcely
left alone, all restraint is at an end. Nobody
thinks of being in the residence of a monarch and
at the table of a princess. One is in a republic,
where liberty is in the chair, and where one's
bill is to be paid with merry jests. We laugh,
joke, sing, and, has the conversation been
seasoned with too caustic attic salt, we put on it a
glass of champagne, which sets all right again.
We have bound ourselves to the law never to
remember beyond the threshold of the duchess
what the merry moment had produced."

This gay princess, to bring the ducal crown
to her second favourite son, declared her first-
born illegitimate; but the first-born, Duke
Charles, took this in ill part, and kept her a
prisoner in Goeppingen. There she died when
forty-nine years old.

Duke Charles, her eldest son, had no mind for
anything but self-indulgence. During his
minority, the government had been directed by one
of the most respectable men, who was celebrated
as a statesman and philosopher. His name was
Bilfinger. As long as he lived, the young duke
was restrained; but when he died, in the middle
of the eighteenth century, the prince began to
live " at a gallop." The well-known memoir
writer, Cajanova, who knew all the courts, said,
that the court at Stuttgard " was the most
brilliant in Europe." Thus it remained for forty-
three more years. Theatre, opera, and ballet were
the duke's chief hobbies. The Parisian god of
dance, Vestris, was engaged for six months
every year, and received twelve thousand florins.
There were, throughout the whole year, festivities
in great variety, the direction of which was
confided to an Italian, Veronese. Fireworks,
sometimes of incredible costliness, were
frequently exhibited.

Of course, all these things required money,
and the first minister of the duke, Baron
Hardenberg, did his utmost both to provide
it, and at the same time to check expenditure.
The baron sometimes tried to save money
in petty things, and once refused to honour the
duke's cheque for a dozen of silk dominoes. The
enraged prince made up his mind to get rid of the
baron, and at a ball, where he had tried to save
a few hundreds of wax candles, the duke spoke to
him publicly and intentionally, in such an offensive
manner that the old baron was compelled
to take his dismissal. The privy councillor,
Baron Roedes, the same who arrested the Jew
Suess, had been dismissed long since. The
duke thus became free to indulge all his inclinations.

Once the duke carried off from a ball the
daughter of his privy councillor, Baron von
Volgstaedt. The father killed himself.

This Duke Charles, who increased his army to
seventeen thousand men, in most expensive
uniforms, ordered that every one should take off
his hat to a sentry, as if he were the duke
himself. A councillor of the chamber, for omitting
that homage, received, by order of the lieutenant
of the guard, twenty-five strokes with a stick.

When all these burdens were borne, the
people of Würtemberg, who had to bear them,
numbered only six hundred thousand! They had
to work and to starve, paying their wages to
amuse their duke; but not satisfied with
the produce of their labour, he sold even their
very bodies. In one year he sold to France six
thousand of his subjects as soldiers, for the sum
of about one hundred and twenty-five thousand
pounds sterling. When the duke commanded the
receivers of the taxes to deliver up to him their
funds in hand, and they had the courage to refuse,
he used force. One day the House of the States
was surrounded by soldiers, and the money
taken away. John Jacob Moser, one of the
most celebrated writers upon public law, who
was then " consulent," or counsellor of the
States, in very respectful terms protested against
the act. The duke ordered him to
Ludwigsburg, and maltreated him with his own
hands in the hall of audience, and sent him
to the fortress of Hohentwiel, where he
remained a prisoner for five years.

The duke treated his  subjects as slaves.
If he chose to have a winter sledge party in
Stuttgard, and there was no snow in the streets,
the peasants had to bring it in from the country.
They might well emigrate to America, as
numbers of them did.

Another victim of the tyranny of this duke
was Colonel Rieger. He was a man of
herculean frame and strength, and of inflexible
mind. He became a great favourite of the
duke's, and was envied by many. One of his
enemies was a Frenchman, Count Montmartin,
who became prime minister. This man so
managed that letters were sent to the duke's
brothers, which implied that Rieger intended
to deliver up Würtemberg to the Prussians.
The duke gave the general a thrashing at
parade, and sent him, without even an examination,
to the castle of Hohenasperg, where he
was kept in a subterranean dungeon for five
years. Here, a scoffer and free-thinker, he
became a devotee. When Montmartin was
dismissed, the States succeeded in persuading the
duke to set Rieger free. His highness invited
him to supper, and said: " Remain my friend,
as you have always been! " He afterwards
made him general and governor of Hohenasperg,
the place in which he had been confined.

This Count Montmartin was one of the
greatest rascals in the world. He won the
duke by his base flattery, and his expedients for
procuring money. The count required it to be
said no more of a prince that he was born, but
that he " Increased the Number of the High on
this or that day." The count helped the duke
to abolish the States, and in fact governed without
them. When Moser was sent to Hohentwiel,
the minister for some years declared to