61 After forge to f lust, so he soon grew tired of her serene highness the chamber-maid, whom he had too rashly placed upon the throne of Meinungen; and, being some time ago at Frankfort, his majesty became enamoured with the wife of a secretary of a secretary of the empress-queen's residing in that town. He pursued, and obtained the enjoyment of his passion in a very short time, for the fair one, dazzled by the highdegree of her lover, and her husband fired with the ambition of gaining the favour and confidence of so great a prince, soon agreed that she should yield herself up to his arms, upon such conditions as were stipulated at Frankfort, but not made public till some time after they all arrived at Meinungen. Upon the arrival of the prince in his capital, love began to display his triumph over his serene highness. The lady and her husband found beauty and ambition gratified to the extent of their wishes. She was declared favourite and he first minister. Her highness, the chamber-maid, was no more to be seen: she was left to the last refuge of tears and patience, and died soon after for actual want of the necessaries of life. The old councillors of Meinungen were thunderstruck, but durst not speak. While the rest of the courtiers applauded what their prince had done, and made all the haste possible to ingratiate themselves with the two new rising suns. No day passed without some fresh instance of his serene highness's love to the wife, and confidence in the husband; and, at last, his fondness for his mistress grew to such a pitch, that he ordered one of his chamberlains to notify to the whole court of Meinungen, that he had given the rank of precedence to his new mistress above and before all and every one of his subjects. This ill-considered step of his serene highness alarmed the whole body of courtiers. They had quietly submitted to many partialities that had been shown to the two strangers, but this wounded their honour. Nothing was to be ⚫ heard but murmurs through the whole corps of nobility of Meinungen, and those murmurs soon swelled into open railings, in which (it is said) the sacred person of the prince himself was not spared. But above, far above the rest, the baroness Kheichlin, wife to the grand veneur of Meinungen, sister to the countess Holsendorf, whose husband is chief of the Consistory, and commonly called Pope of Saxony, and who has six-and-thirty quarters in her coat of arms, gave the loudest vent to her passion. She had long been in possession of the pàs over all the court of Meinungen, and could not bear to see a foreigner walk before her. To revenge herself, therefore, for this affront, she made use of her natural weapon, the tongue, in such a manner, as highly offended the favourite, and, of course, the dread sovereign of Meinungen. But talking was not sufficient for the vent of her anger, and she resolved in the insolence of her heart scribere principi, to remonstrate against the loss of her dignity, suffered by the newmade regulation, and pleaded with great force of reason, her husband's great family and high employments, her own illustrious birth, her alliances, the house of Holsendorf, her coat of arms, and many other of those excellent arguments, which have more force in Germany than anywhere else. To them she was rash enough to add some unpardonable reflections. upon the birth, parentage, and low degree of the persons on whom his serene highness had been ill-advised enough to bestow this new, but odious mark of his favour. This letter (however judiciously wrote) was far from producing the desired effect; for his highness of Meinungen like a wise prince, resolved to go through with what he had once begun, and not to suffer his decrees to be contradicted by his subjects; nor his ordinances to be trampled upon by an insolent woman. Wherefore upon oath being made before him of the injurious language that the baroness had held against himself and his new regulations, he ordered her to be summoned to a formal trial, the issue of which trial was, that the unhappy lady was condemned to have her head severed from her body upon a public scaffold. This dreadful sentence was no sooner published, than the whole principality of Meinungen as with one voice clamoured against it. His serene highness was struck with this, and with and by the advice and consent of his new favourite and minister (either from a sense of the injustice of the sentence, or from his own compassionate nature or, what is more probable, from a fear of the consequences) resolved to alter the sentence, and instead of beheading the Baroness Kheichlin as had been decreed, it was changed and executed in the following manner : A scaffold being erected in the great square (if there is one) of the capital of Meinungen, the unfortunate lady was conducted thither in a mourning coach from the prison where she had for some time been confined. When she arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she was so weak that she could not get up the steps of it; |