It was one of those absolutely still winter mornings, so fraught with peace, so purified by the great white silence of snow. Something of the artificial elegance, the stilted formality of the eighteenth century with its scrupulous apeing of French airs, mannerisms, and vices, seemed to fall from the lovers in the Jaegerhaus, and for an hour they dreamed of simple natural homely peace. Alas! their dream was of such a life together. Like most dreams it was based on an impossibility. A peasant couple in a sledge passed the window. The man, a sturdy, thick-set figure in the Wirtemberg peasant's short, well-fitting, dark-blue coat, adorned with rows of round knob silver buttons. He wore a peaked fur cap drawn down over the ears. The woman was in a thick blue frieze cape and elaborate Sunday headdress. She had slipped her hand through her husband's arm and they were talking gaily together. Eberhard Ludwig pointed towards them and a sigh escaped his lips. 'There is the peace of two loving hearts. They are happier than we, for their love is duty, their duty love,' he said sadly. 'Alas!' she answered; but she knew that for her such peace was not, and that she would not have wished for it; yet a regret smote her, a yearning to be all she was not. And with this pang came the bitter recollection of her painful humiliation. Her face hardened. 'That happiness is only possible in the protection of the strong,' she said. 'Do you think yonder peasant would suffer his beloved to be scorned, to be insulted? The Duke of Wirtemberg alone cannot protect the woman he loves.' Eberhard Ludwig drew back from her. 'How cruel you are, dear heart,' he said, and a great sadness lay in his voice. She told him that the truth was often cruel to hear; that she but spoke these things because he let himself drift into weak conniving at the intrigues of Johanna Elizabetha. Then she recounted the petty spite and the thousand taunts to which she was subjected. She painted Stuttgart in sombre colours, the dullness, the stiffness. Why should Wirtemberg be the least brilliant, least gay, of all the German courts? She talked of Berlin and the splendours of the newly made King Frederick I. Of Dresden with the Elector-King of Poland, Augustus the Strong; of his splendid residence, the Zwinger, which, like an enchanted palace, had been built in so short a span, and to whose marvels each day was added a wonderful chamber, a gilded dome, or a fair work of art. Why should not peace and happiness reign in Wirtemberg with splendour and gaiety? Why should not a gracious palace rise to rival even the glories of Versailles? She drew the picture with sure strokes, each word an added colour in the vision of a life of tranquil yet brilliant ease and distinguished magnificence.