“At Prague,” he writes, “I found Rossworm, who since our reconciliation had been on terms of the closest friendship with me. He came, the following morning, to my lodging in his coach to take me to the hall of the Palace of Prague,[42] where we walked up and down until the Council rose, when the lords of the Council came to salute Rossworm, whom they held in great respect, on account of his being commander-in-chief of the Army. He then presented me to them, begging them to honour me with their friendship and saying many kind things concerning me.” On leaving the Palace, Rossworm took Bassompierre to dine with an old Bohemian noble named Prestowitz, who occupied the post of burgrave of Karlstein, the fortress in which the Imperial regalia and all the charters of Bohemia were preserved. The burgrave had two sons, the elder of whom was Grand Falconer of the Empire, while the younger, Wolf von Prestowitz, had served with Bassompierre in the recent campaign, and aspired to the command of the cavalry regiment which Bohemia was to send to Hungary that year. For which reason the family were exceedingly civil to the great Rossworm, who could do much to obtain this post for the young man. The burgrave also possessed four young and pretty daughters. Rossworm, it appeared, was in love with the youngest girl, Sibylla; while Bassompierre promptly lost his heart to the third daughter, named Esther, “a young lady of excellent beauty, eighteen years of age, widow since six months of a gentleman called Briczner, to whom she had been married a year.” “We were nobly received and entertained at Prestowitz’s house,” he continues, “and after dinner there was dancing, when I began to fall in love with Madame Esther, who made me understand that she was not displeased with my design, which I revealed to her as I was leaving the house. For she responded in such a way as to afford me the means to write to her, and to tell me the places which she visited, so that I might go there. I went also to see her sometimes at her house, under cover of the friendship which had sprung up between her younger brother and myself, when we were in Hungary.” His new-born passion for “Madame Esther” did not, however, prevent our gentleman from indulging in other amorous adventures of a much less excusable character: