"'I wish to inform your Highness in a few words, that in consequence of our afore-mentioned divorce, I have again engaged myself in marriage with the noble Lady, Marie Susanna von Degenfeld. I therefore hope that your Highness will be therewith content, as it cannot now be altered. For I have already sent for our dear and trusty Samuel Heyland, preacher of the Lutheran community of our city of Heidelberg, to unite us in Christian wedlock. But as I know well that your Highness has begotten me three royal children, it becomes me to furnish your Highness with a princely allowance for the rest of your life. Therefore we grant unto your Highness the power to make use at your good pleasure of the half of the castle of Heidelberg, and you may receive from our lord treasurer sufficient money for your maintenance; only you must reconcile yourself to my present wife, and inflict no injury upon her, that I may not have occasion to withdraw my favour from your Highness. "'I remain your Highness's graciously until death, "'Your Highness's Elector. "'Ladenburg, April 15, 1652.' "My answer was as follows:-- "'Most august Prince and high-born Lord, "'From your Princely Highness's letter I have learnt with the greatest consternation that your Princely Highness is minded now to cast me off entirely, and never more to recognize me as your wife. I will commend my cause, woeful as it is, to God, the righteous judge. I will henceforth consider myself as a widow; whose husband still lives, led astray by a wanton worthless person, and drawn away from his lawful wife. "'For the ample maintenance which your Princely Highness has ordered for me, I render you hearty thanks. I will also be careful so to behave myself to your Princely Highness's concubine that she shall have no cause to complain. Further, a nobleman from Stuttgart is here, who reports that in ten days his Serene Highness Prince Eberhard von Würtemberg, our dearly beloved lord cousin and brother, together with the lady his wife, are coming to visit us at Heidelberg. So your Princely Highness will undoubtedly come here, and arrange that they shall have right princely accommodation. "'Datum Heidelberg, the 16th of April, 1657. "'Your Princely Highness's until death, but now deeply afflicted lawful Electress of the Rhine.' "After three days our lord and husband returned, bringing with him the von Degenfeld, under the escort of a hundred newly enlisted dragoons. Then indeed were we cut to the heart when we saw our former waiting-woman usurping our place and presented to every one as Electress, yet could not venture to say the least word against her. We kept a separate table, and had our own servants, and a body-guard of twenty cuirassiers appointed for our own selves.