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At this time he went a good deal into literary society, and became intimate with several women-writers, among them the Graefin Hahn-Hahn, Rahel, and that amazing lady, Bettine von Arnim. With the last-named he struck up an intellectual friendship which roused the jealousy of Lucie, and was finally wrecked by Bettine's attempts to obtain a spiritual empire over the lord of Muskau.

"My dear Sophie," said the Graefin sweetly, "that isn't in the least bit clever; but you do try so hard that I suppose I oughtn't to discourage you. Tell me something: has it ever occurred to you that Elsa would do very well for Wratislav? It's time he married somebody, and why not Elsa?" "Elsa marry that dreadful boy!" gasped the Baroness. "Beggars can't be choosers," observed the Graefin.

The Graefin's two elder sons had made deplorable marriages. It was, observed Clovis, a family habit. The youngest boy, Wratislav, who was the black sheep of a rather greyish family, had as yet made no marriage at all. "There is certainly this much to be said for viciousness," said the Graefin, "it keeps boys out of mischief."

"Such a thing as that no one in our family has ever done," gasped the Baroness. "Perhaps he didn't appeal to them in the same way," suggested the Graefin judicially. The Baroness began to feel that she was not getting the astonishment and sympathy to which her catastrophe entitled her. "At any rate," she snapped, "now she can't marry Wratislav."

The Graefin had the presence of mind to laugh in the right key. Three weeks later the Graefin bore down upon the Baroness Sophie in a foreign bookseller's shop in the Graben, where she was, possibly, buying books of devotion, though it was the wrong counter for them. "I've just left the dear children at the Rodenstahls'," was the Graefin's greeting.

"I don't know why I shouldn't talk cleverly," she would complain; "my mother was considered a brilliant conversationalist." "These things have a way of skipping one generation," said the Graefin. "That seems so unjust," said Sophie; "one doesn't object to one's mother having outshone one as a clever talker, but I must admit that I should be rather annoyed if my daughters talked brilliantly."

The couple, after perpetually quarrelling for ten or twelve years, were divorced, by mutual consent, in 1797, and the Graefin shortly afterwards married one of her numerous admirers, Graf von Seydewitz, with whom she lived as unhappily as with her first husband. Her little son was educated at a Moravian school, and in the holidays was left entirely to the care of the servants.

As these Letters were not written until the prince had passed his fortieth year, it will be necessary, before considering them in detail, to give a brief sketch of his previous career. Hermann Ludwig was the only son of Graf von Pueckler of Schloss Branitz, and of his wife, Clementine, born a Graefin von Gallenberg, and heiress to the vast estate of Muskau in Silesia.

"Well, none of them do," said the Graefin consolingly. "I don't know about that," said the Baroness, promptly veering round in defence of her offspring. "Elsa said something quite clever on Thursday about the Triple Alliance. Something about it being like a paper umbrella, that was all right as long as you didn't take it out in the rain. It's not every one who could say that."

At last, soon after noon, Hogarth, with a considerable following, was seen ascending the steps, on his arm the Queen of the Ceremony a little Bavarian Graefin, famous for her face: he, princely now with that cosmopolitan polish picked up in Courts, bending above her with laughter, making her laugh also, as they paced up.