The Duke and his guest remained together all the morning, His Highness showing the King each detail of the palace. In the orangery they came across two remarkably tall garden boys, and Friedrich Wilhelm immediately offered Eberhard Ludwig three hundred thalers apiece for them. Now, they happened to be her Excellency's own gardeners, and to be proficient in the art of cultivating roses, so Serenissimus prayed the King to let him find other giants for him; these, he said, were not his to offer. 'Whose then? Whose then? What the devil! Why, the houndsdirts must belong to you! Whose can they be? If they are my little cousin's I will soon make her see I will have them,' the Prussian monarch shouted. 'They belong to her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin, sire.' 'What, that woman? Ha! you took her to Moempelgard, I hear! Ridiculous things, women--want the lash, the whip. Do you hear, old comrade?--every woman wants the lash. Look at my daughter now--absurd hussy! will not marry. I ought to lash her, but she hides behind her mother's petticoats. Ridiculous things, women.' Serenissimus endeavoured to lead the shouting monarch from the orangery, but he was not to be outdone. 'Come to Berlin, boy; fine uniforms, good beer, and tobacco. Come, you will love me like your father!' he yelled at the tallest gardener, bestowing a heavy blow on the youth's shoulders with the stout cudgel which he always carried. The end of it was that Eberhard Ludwig made him a present of the Landhofmeisterin's gardeners, and the King in high good humour retired to take an hour's nap before starting to enjoy some wild-boar sticking in the forest. All that day the Landhofmeisterin did not see Serenissimus, only in the afternoon she received a billet from him in which he forbade her to attend the supper in the state banqueting-hall. 'The Erbprincessin will be the only lady; she, being the King's cousin, must attend, but I command you to remain away. You will understand my reasons when you consider the events of this morning.--E. L.' The letter was short, formal, cold in tone, and the Landhofmeisterin was deeply wounded. She had known that Friedrich Wilhelm would be unfriendly to her; his rough virtue, and hatred of illicit relationships, were famous throughout Germany, and she was aware that he would view with displeasure the magnificence and the French manners of Ludwigsburg. Had he not stamped, beaten, and roared out of existence every trace of the elegance and pomp of the Berlin court as it had been under his father, Friedrich I.?--that monarch who, by the way, had granted the Graevenitz that Letter of Royal Protection twenty years ago.