The Imperial army under command of the Elector of Hanover was at Heilbronn in Wirtemberg, a mediaeval Imperial free town. Eberhard Ludwig, in command of the Wirtemberg contingent, was with the army. His Highness had taken up his quarters in the ancient Abbey of Maulbronn, between which and Heilbronn spread the encampment of the Imperial army. Eberhard Ludwig had chosen Maulbronn for his quarters, thinking that the peace of the Monastery, with its shadowy, highly vaulted cloisters, and its old-world garden, might soothe the restlessness which had devoured his being since his absence from Wilhelmine. In Maulbronn's garden stands the haunted tower where legend says that Doctor Faustus, the frenzied searcher for the elixir of eternal life, bartered his soul to Satan in return for a span of youth and love. The Faust tower faces the great cloister, and they say the Doctor, when sealing his pact with the devil, was disturbed by the monks' chanting. Eberhard Ludwig revelled in the garden and its fantastic legends, but his yearning for Wilhelmine only grew the stronger. Why was she not with him to dream in the cool silence of the cloister? How she would love the garden with its luxuriance of old-world flowers--the fragrant roses planted by some long-dead monk--the huge tree-peonies. The very breezes seemed legend-laden. Wilhelmine! beloved! It was a futile thing indeed for this poet-prince to endeavour to forget the woman he loved! In a garden so wondrous beautiful, in this place of dreaming, he could but dream the more. So, when the news came that Villars had retired, his Highness decided he must follow Wilhelmine to Switzerland forthwith. Forstner was summoned, and the Wirtemberg troops placed under his command. Of course he protested he was not efficient, but, as usual, Eberhard Ludwig the impetuous overruled him. The news of his Highness's departure caused angry consternation in Stuttgart. Johanna Elizabetha wept, but the Duchess-mother raged. She had fancied that her son, deeply obliged to her for her generous action of the war indemnity, would listen to her reasonable voice as a reward. 'Ridiculous!' _he_ argued. 'I never asked her to pay the indemnity; if she chooses to do so, well and good, but it does not bind me to obedience.' There is a pathetic letter from the Duchess-mother to her son, a dignified epistle with a very human postscriptum, wherein bubbles over a mother's hatred for her son's seducer, the honest woman's furious disdain of the triumphant charm of an adventuress. 'MON FILS,--Si j'ai delivre le pays du fleau francois j'attends que vous delivriez la Cour du fleau de votre peche. Revenez a Stuttgard et faites votre devoir de mari, de pere, de fils et de Prince Chretien. Vous redonnerez la paix a votre mere, 'MAGDALENE SYBILLE, PRINCESSE DE HESSE DARMSTADT, 'DUCHESSE DOUAIRIERE DE WIRTEMBERG.