Meanwhile, the two courts of the Bishop of Osnaburgh and the Duke of Zell continued to present a striking contrast. The bishop was one of those men who think themselves nothing unless they are imitating some greater man, not in his virtues but his vices. There was one man in Europe whom Ernest Augustus described as a ‘paragon,’ and that distinguished personage was Louis XIV. The vices, extravagance, the pomposity of the great king, were the dear delights of the little prince. As Louis neglected his wife, so Ernest Augustus disregarded _his_. Fortunately, Sophia, the wife of the latter, had resources in her mind, which made her consider with exemplary indifference the faithlessness of her lord. At this court of Hanover, two sisters, Catherine and Elizabeth von Meisenbuch, had, for some time, set the fashion of a witchery of costume, remarkable for its taste, and sometimes for outraging it. They possessed, too, the great talent of Madame de Sillery Genlis, and were inimitable in their ability and success in getting up little _fêtes_, at home or abroad, in the _salon_ or _al fresco_--formal and full-dressed, or rustic and easy--where major-generals were costumed as agricultural swains, and ladies of honour as nymphs or dairymaids, with costumes rural of fashioning, but as resplendent and costly as silkman and jeweller could make them. At a sort of Masque, invented by the sisters von Meisenbuch, one appeared as Diana, the other as Bellona, and they captivated all hearts, from those of the prince-bishop and his son to that of the humblest aspirant in the court circle. These young ladies came to court to push their fortunes. They hoped in some way to serve the sovereign bishop; or, failing him, to be agreeable to his heir, George Louis (afterwards George I. of England). But even this prince, a little and not an attractive person, to say nothing of the bishop, seemed for a time a flight above them. They could wait a new opportunity; for as for defeat in their aspirations, they would not think of it. They had the immense power of those persons who are possessed by one single idea, and who are under irresistible compulsion to carry it out to reality. They could not all at once reach the prince-bishop or his heir, and accordingly they directed the full force of their enchantments at two very unromantic-looking personages, the private tutors of the young princes of Hanover. The ladies were soon mighty at Greek particles, learned in the aorists, fluent on the digamma, and familiar with the mysteries of the differential calculus.