440.] Her brother Gravenitz the page has become Count Gravenitz the prime minister, or chief of the Governing Cabal; she Countess Gravenitz and Autocrat of Wurtemberg.
Loaded with wealth, with so-called honors, she and hers, there go they, flaunting sky-high; none else admitted to more than the liberty of breathing in silence in this Duchy;--the poor Duke Eberhard Ludwig making no complaint; obedient as a child to the bidding of his Gravenitz.

He is become a mere enchanted simulacrum of a Duke; bewitched under worse than Thessalian spells; without faculty of willing, except as she wills; his People and he the plaything of this Circe or Hecate, that has got hold of him.

So it has lasted for above twenty years.
Gravenitz has become the wonder of Germany; and requires, on these bad grounds, a slight mention in Human History for some time to come.

Certainly it is by the Gravenitz alone that Eberhard Ludwig is remembered; and yet, down since Ulrich with the Thumb, [Ulricus POLLEX (right thumb bigger than left); died A.D.1265 (Michaelis, iii.

262).] which of those serene abstruse Beutelsbachers, always an abstruse obstinate set, has so fixed himself in your memory ?-- "Most persons in Wurtemberg, for quiet's sake, have complied with the Gravenitz; though not without protest, and sometimes spoken protest.
Thus the Right Reverend Osiander (let us name Osiander, Head of the Church in Wurtemberg) flatly refused to have her name inserted in the Public Prayers; 'Is not she already prayed for ?' said Osiander: 'Do we not say, DELIVER US FROM EVIL ?' said the indignant Protestant man.