A German Pompadour. Hon. Marie Hay
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Hon. Marie Hay
A German Pompadour
Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Grävenitz, Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664597786
Table of Contents
THE GREAT TRIUMPH AND THE SHADOW
CHAPTER I
THE INTRIGUE
'Es ist eine Hofkabale.'—Schiller.
On the outskirts of the village of Oberhausen in South Wirtemberg stands a deserted house. Rats are its only denizens now; rats and the 'poor ghosts,' so the peasants say. Two hundred years ago this eerie mansion was occupied by living men and women, perchance the ghosts of to-day. Who can tell? But I, who have grown to love them, having studied the depths of their hearts, I pray that they may rest them well in their graves, and that the Neuhaus ghosts be not my friends of 1705.
It was a fitting place for intrigues this Neuhaus, standing as it did so near in actual mileage to the court of Stuttgart, and hard by the Jesuit centre of Rottenburg. The high-road was close at hand, yet Neuhaus, shut off by peaceful fields, was hidden from the passer-by, and here began the great intrigue, as it was called then. Of a truth the plot, as it was conceived, was no mighty thing; it was designed, as many another gossamer web of court gallantry and petty pecuniary gain, for obscure individuals; but great it became through the potent will of a woman.
On a