The scandals rife at the Court of Heidelberg, in 1658, had by no means abated after Rupert's withdrawal. The dissensions of the Elector and Electress became a subject of public remark, and the Queen of Bohemia had herself written of them to Rupert, adding prudently--"I do not tell you this for truth, for it is written from the Court of Cassel, where, I confess, they are very good at telling of stories, and enlarging of them."[20] But, unluckily, matters were so bad that no embellishments from the Court of Cassel could make them much worse. The scandal--"accidents fallen out in my domestic affairs," Charles Louis phrased it,[21]--had come to such a pitch that the Electress, after boxing her husband's ears at a public dinner, and {352} attempting to shoot both him and Louise von Degenfeldt, fled from Heidelberg, leaving her two young children, Karl and Elizabeth Charlotte,--or Carellie and Liselotte, as their father called them,--to the mercy of her husband. Thereupon Charles Louis formally married Louise von Degenfeldt, who was thenceforth treated as his wife. By her he had no less than eight children, but as the marriage was not, of course, really legal, none of those children could succeed him in the Electorate. Carellie, his only legitimate son, was delicate, and his marriage childless; Elizabeth Charlotte had renounced all claim to the Palatinate on her marriage with the Duke of Orleans, and in 1674 the extinction of the Simmern line seemed imminent. This danger affected Charles Louis very deeply. He had been a bad son, an unkind brother, and an unfaithful husband, but he was, for all that, a good ruler and an affectionate father. "The Regenerator" he was called in the war-wasted country to which his laborious care had brought peace and comparative prosperity; and his name was long remembered there with reverent love. The prospect of leaving his cherished country and his beloved children to the mercy of a distant and Roman Catholic cousin, caused him acute suffering. Nor did he believe the said children would be much better off in the care of their eldest brother and his wife. "What devours my heart is that, in case of my death, I leave so many poor innocents to the mercy of their enemies," he wrote to Sophie; "Wilhelmena (the wife of Carellie) shows sufficiently what I may expect of her for those who will be under her power after my death; since, particularly in company, she shows so much contempt for them. This also has some influence on Carellie, who treats them--with the exception of Carllutz--like so many strangers, as does Wilhelmena;.... the poor little ones are always in fear of her severe countenance."[22] {353}