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.