These three men brought with them two women, who were familiar figures at the Court of George the First. One was a Mademoiselle Schütz, a niece of Bernstorff, and probably a relative of the envoy who had been recalled by order of Queen Anne. She was of pleasing appearance, but made herself exceedingly offensive to the English ladies by giving herself great airs, and wishing to take precedence even of countesses. She also was a bird of prey, but as she had little influence, her opportunities of plunder were limited, and she seems mainly to have occupied herself with borrowing jewels from English peeresses, wherewith to bedeck her person, and forgetting to return them. By the time she went back to Hanover, it was computed that she carried off with her a large box of treasure obtained in this way. The other woman was Madame Robethon, wife of the secretary aforesaid, who, being of mean birth, squat figure, and harsh, croaking voice, was generally known in court circles as _La Grenouille_, or “The Frog”. But the avarice of all these was as nothing compared with that of the mistresses, Schulemburg and Kielmansegge, who were now nicknamed the “Maypole” and the “Elephant” respectively. These ladies were sumptuously lodged in St. James’s Palace, but their suites of rooms were situated far apart, with King George between them, a wise precaution, as they hated one another with an intense and jealous hatred. Of the two, Schulemburg had immeasurably more influence, and, consequently, far greater opportunities of amassing a fortune. She was brazen and shameless in her greed for gold. When, as a protest against the arrest of his son-in-law Sir William Wyndham in 1715, the Duke of Somerset, the proudest nobleman in England, and the premier Protestant duke, resigned the Mastership of the Horse, Schulemburg had the impudence to propose that the office should be left vacant and the revenues given to her. To every one’s disgust, the King consented and handed over to her the profits of this appointment, amounting to £7,500 a year. Schulemburg was a veritable daughter of the horse-leech, always crying “Give, give,” and it says very little for English morals or honesty to find that, much as she was despised, her apartments at St. James’s Palace were crowded by some of the first of the Whig nobility, and not only they, but their wives and daughters paid the mistress their court.