WAIBLINGEN, within an hour's ride, has got memorability on other grounds;--what reader has not heard of GHIBELLINES, meaning Waiblingens?
And in another hour up the River, you will come to Beutelsbach itself, where Ulrich with the Thumb had his abode (better luck to him!), and generated this Lover of the Gravenitz, and much other nonsense loud now and then for the last four centuries in the world!-- "There is something of abstruse in all these Beutelsbachers, from Ulrich with the Thumb downwards: a mute ennui, an inexorable obstinacy; a certain streak of natural gloom which no illumination can abolish.
Veracity of all kinds is great in them; sullen passive courage plenty of it; active courage rarer; articulate intellect defective: hence a strange stiff perversity of conduct visible among them, often marring what wisdom they have;--it is the royal stamp of Fate put upon these men.

What are called fateful or fated men; such as are often seen on the top places of the world, making an indifferent figure there.

Something of this, I doubt not, is concerned in Eberhard Ludwig's fascination; and we shall see other instances farther down in this History.
"But so, for twenty years, the absurd Duke, transformed into a mere Porcus by his Circe in that scandalous miraculous manner, has lived; and so he still lives.

And his Serene Wife, equally obstinate, is living at Stuttgard, happily out of his sight now.

One Son, a weakly man, who had one heir, but has now none, is her only comfort.