The court was in a quandary, in comparison to which the former perplexities in regard to the Graevenitzin were mere bagatelles. If they refused to go to court festivities where the Landhofmeisterin, after the Duchess, held the first rank, they would risk being excluded from court perhaps for years. Again, who knew how soon the favourite might fall into disgrace, or be banished once more by some unexpected event? There was much talk and fervid declarations of noble sentiments, loyalty to the Duchess, love of purity, and the rest; but when Wilhelmine invited the entire court to visit her at the Jaegerhaus, on the occasion of a grand evening rout, it was noticeable that those few who did not appear sent copious excuses, pretending illness, and adding almost medical descriptions of their ailments, so anxious were they that Wilhelmine should believe them to be really indisposed! Already it was considered dangerous to offend the Graevenitzin, as they still called the Countess of Wuerben, her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin, but to her face she was 'your Excellency,' and they paid her great court.

Naturally the Duchess Johanna Elizabetha held aloof, but she knew she must one day meet her rival face to face, one day take part in a court festivity where the woman would be only second in formal rank, in reality the first in the estimation of all.

The winter days grew short and dark, and Christmas approached. Christmas rejoicings with this sinful woman queening it at masque and dance! Even from informal family gatherings the Landhofmeisterin, as first lady in the land, could not be excluded.

'Dear and honoured Madame my Mother,' Johanna Elizabetha wrote, 'I have to meet this woman again. Let the first encounter not be before the world. I will invite her to our Christmas tree. Come you too, dear Madame my Mother, even if there is snow on the ground, to help your unhappy daughter, Johanna Elizabetha.' Thus she wrote to the formidable dame at Stetten.

It must be conceded that for the favourite this family gathering to which she was bidden presented disagreeable prospects of extreme difficulty, and she craved Eberhard Ludwig to permit her to decline the honour, but Serenissimus implored her to consent. It would be unwise to rebuff the Duchess's overture, and after all, possibly it was her Highness's intention to live peaceably with her husband's mistress. Other ladies had done so. He quoted history and recent events: Louis XIV., Louise de la Valliere, and Marie Therese of France, and so on. Also he represented to her that the first meeting with Johanna Elizabetha would be a trifle awkward with the whole court agape, so perhaps this private family gathering was an excellent opportunity; besides, as Landhofmeisterin, it was correct she should be included in the Petit Cercle.

She mocked at the homely custom of the Christmas tree, calling it unfitting for a grand seigneur's household to indulge in such old-fashioned peasant-like rejoicings.

'Can you dream of such a festivity at Versailles?' she asked, laughing.

He told her that his mother clung to the habit. It was an ancient German custom thus to celebrate the Birth of Christ.

'I love the notion, too, that in all my villages the peasants can have the same as I have, for once, poor souls!' he added simply.

'Eberhard, you are ridiculous!—yes, a ridiculous poet-fellow. But I will come to your peasant celebration, if it pleases you.' She was touched by this gentle saying of his.

And thus it fell out that on Christmas eve Wilhelmine ordered her coach to convey her to the castle. She drove through the snow in no happy frame of mind. Christmas trees and the favourite!—could anything be more incongruous? and she knew it. Angrily she sneered at the simple homeliness of the old German custom. Peasants could do these absurdities, but the Duchess of Wirtemberg?

* * * * *

In the long room where the madrigals had been sung on that well-remembered evening when Wilhelmine was installed lady-in-waiting to her Highness, a tall fir-tree was planted in a gilded barrel. A thousand twinkling lights burned on the branches, and little trinkets dangled temptingly. Overhead, on the topmost branch, the waxen Christmas angel with tinsel wings hovered over this family gathering. Symbol of peace and goodwill, this angel would look down pitifully on the men and women round the Christmas tree, whose hearts were full of bitterness, of envy and hatred! Lackeys were fastening candles on to the branches, and Johanna Elizabetha and Madame de Stafforth were hanging up trinkets and playthings for the Erbprinz.

The Duchess-mother entered. She glanced round the room. 'Has the enemy not arrived?' she said humorously.

Johanna Elizabetha sighed.

'No, she has not come yet. It is hard she should spoil our Christmas Eve; but it is better than meeting her for the first time as Landhofmeisterin with all her friends to stare at me.'

'She will not enjoy her evening, my dear,' returned the Duchess-mother, with a grim smile.

At this moment Eberhard Ludwig entered, leading the Erbprinz by the hand. He sometimes endeavoured to be a kind father, but it was no easy matter for him. The Duchess-mother's face softened as she greeted her son, and bent to kiss the little boy, who scarcely responded to the old lady's embrace. His shining, excited eyes were fixed upon the Christmas tree, and snatching his hand from the Duke's grasp, he began to dance round in frantic childish rapture. Johanna Elizabetha forgot her troubles watching her son's joy, and she commenced cutting off the playthings for him.

'It were fitting to await our guest's arrival, Madame, before you strip the tree,' said the Duke coldly.

'Nonsense!' interrupted the Duchess-mother, 'surely Elizabetha can give her child the playthings if she wishes to?'

'Her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin!' announced a page, throwing open the door, and Wilhelmine appeared on the threshold.

His Highness hurried forward to greet her, while Johanna Elizabetha instinctively drew nearer to the Duchess-mother, catching the Erbprinz by the arm.

Wilhelmine bent low in an elaborate courtesy. Her Highness held out her hand shyly for her rival to kiss. The Duchess-mother watched the comedy for an instant, then turning to the Duke who stood behind Wilhelmine, nervously fingering his rapier-hilt, she said:

'Serenissimus will have the kindness to present to me the Landhofmeisterin, as I have not the pleasure to know her.'

'Madame, my mother permits me—This is Madame la Comtesse de Wuerben, Landhofmeisterin,' he stammered, and the Duchess-mother threw him a contemptuous glance.

'Ah, Madame de Wuerben! how sad it must be for you to be obliged to leave your husband in Bohemia,' she said. 'Have you good news of him now? I am so interested in illness. Tell me exactly what ails poor Count Wuerben.'

Wilhelmine stared at this formidable dame in consternation. Wuerben's fictitious ailments were difficult to name.

'He suffered—from—from—smallpox some years ago, your Highness, and has never recovered his health,' she said haltingly.

'Ah! smallpox; yes, indeed, a terrible malady, and but too common. Did your husband contract it at the same time as you did, Madame? I see you must have been a great sufferer,' said the Duchess-mother, fixing her sharp brown eyes on the few hardly distinguishable pockmarks on Wilhelmine's face. The favourite flushed.

'I was not married to Monsieur de Wuerben at that time, your Highness,' she answered.

'Oh, indeed! Madame, forgive me; I did not know how long you had been married. Have you any children, Madame de Wuerben? No? Ah, a sad pity! The little ones would doubtless have been a consolation to you while you are forced to be absent from your husband; but perhaps we may have the pleasure of seeing Monsieur de Wuerben in Stuttgart before long?'

'I do not know, your Highness,' said Wilhelmine shortly. Each word the Duchess-mother spoke cut her to the quick, and she hated the tall, gaunt old lady as even she had never hated before.

'Well, I hope for you sake, Madame, your husband will be able to reside here soon. It is hard for a young woman to be alone. And besides, really you should pray for a son to succeed to the Wuerben family honours. I used to know a Count Wuerben at Vienna many years ago. A Count Nepomuk Wuerben—'Nepi,' they called him—perhaps an uncle of your husband's?'

'That is my husband's name, your Highness,' replied Wilhelmine in a toneless voice.

'Impossible! Why, the man I mean will be sixty years old by now, and he disgraced himself and squandered a fortune. No; that man cannot be your husband, dear Madame! I heard he had made a fearful marriage—some adventuress who had amassed money and wished for an old and honourable name. It interests me much; pray ask your husband if that Wuerben was a cousin of his. A disagreeable subject though, for, of course, no nobleman would care to own so vile a person as cousin.'

Wilhelmine threw up her head proudly. 'Your Highness, Count Nepomuk Wuerben is my husband, and I must request you not to criticise him in my presence.'

Her spirit pleased the Duchess-mother, who replied in a different tone: 'That then, Madame, is your misfortune. We will not mention it again.'

Eberhard Ludwig during this painful scene stood in embarrassed, angry silence. He durst not interfere, for knowing his mother's character, he was well aware that any intervention on his part would only draw down upon Wilhelmine a flood of free-spoken remarks.

Meanwhile the other members of her Highness's intimate circle had entered from a small withdrawing-room, leading out of the larger apartment.

The Stafforths, Madame de Gemmingen, a young gentleman of the household, Monsieur de Roeder, and the Erbprinz's governor, Monsieur le Baron de Walchingen, his tutor, and various other unimportant persons. The Duke's mother and Wilhelmine stood together in the centre of this group. The older woman wore the sombre garb of a widow's mourning, which she had never put off since Duke Wilhelm Ludwig's death thirty years ago.

Wilhelmine was dressed, as usual, in delicate yellow brocade with profusely powdered hair and flashing jewels. They made a striking contrast—sober sadness and old age, radiant youth and brilliant, lavish joy. And near by was Johanna Elizabetha, clad in dull, unnoticeable garments of grey blue silk. To Eberhard Ludwig the group was symbolic of his life's history, and he sighed heavily as he turned to greet Madame de Stafforth.

The Erbprinz, attracted by Wilhelmine's beautiful face and bright clothes, had begged a paper flower from the Christmas tree and offered it to her. Partly because she loved to tease children, partly because the child's talk made a diversion from the Duchess-mother's acid remarks, Wilhelmine began bantering with the little boy, telling him the wildest tales, witty absurdities, sheer delightful fooling. The Erbprinz, accustomed to Johanna Elizabetha's prim stories always adorned with obvious moral endings, acclaimed Wilhelmine's phantasies with enthusiastic cries, begging her to tell him more. He was fascinated, half-afraid, puzzled, excited. Johanna Elizabetha watched this pair with jealous, disapproving eyes, and several times called the child away; but he shook his head, and holding on to Wilhelmine's gown looked up into her face in rapturous enjoyment and admiration of this beautiful new being and her wonderful stories. At length her Highness could bear it no longer. She approached the strangely assorted couple, and drawing the Erbprinz to her she tried to fix his attention upon the burning candles and glittering toys on the tree. But the boy pushed her from him; he wanted to hear the lovely lady's stories; they were much finer than any his mother ever told him, he said. Johanna Elizabetha could stay and listen too, if she liked, but she must not interrupt, he commanded. He struggled from his mother's encircling arm and, drawing near the favourite, he leaned his head against her, nestling close. Wilhelmine, really touched by the child's confiding ways, bent down to him and slipped her arm round his shoulders.

At this moment the Duchess-mother turning, saw the unexpected sight of her grandson in the embrace of the Graevenitz. She looked at them with stern disapproval. The Erbprinz lifted his hand and stroked Wilhelmine's face. This was too much for Johanna Elizabetha. She sprang forward like a tigress defending her young, and snatched the boy away from Wilhelmine. Immediately the delicate, over-excitable child set up a wailing cry; he wanted to stay with the lovely lady who told such diverting stories, he said. Johanna Elizabetha in vain endeavoured to soothe him. Now the Duchess-mother bore down on the group and commenced rating the child for his disobedience. Johanna Elizabetha, emboldened by the old lady's approach, turned fiercely upon Wilhelmine.

'You have frightened my boy with your horrible stories!' she cried, and dragged the wailing Erbprinz towards the door; but he resisted manfully, crying that he would stay with the lovely lady. His granddame caught him, and bestowed a ringing box on his ear. The child raised a very tempest of sobs, and flinging off his mother's arm, fled howling towards Wilhelmine. Johanna Elizabetha, beyond herself with anger and disgust, horrified at the notion of the child being brought into contact with the woman she regarded as debased, rushed forward and, pulling the child violently away, she cried wildly—

'Do not touch her; it is not fitting!'

Eberhard Ludwig, who had been conscientiously conversing with the few guests, hurried up.

'What is this?' he asked angrily. 'Madame, why does your son howl like a beggar's brat?'

The Duchess-mother came forward. 'A sorry spectacle, indeed,' she said grimly. 'The Landhofmeisterin, not being used to children, has frightened the Erbprinz.'

'Monseigneur,' broke in Wilhelmine, white to the lips, 'I crave permission to depart at once. I am not well.'

'Not well, Madame?' cried the Duke in an anxious tone; 'let me escort you immediately to your coach.'

Wilhelmine bowed to the two Duchesses, but her salute remained unacknowledged.

A petty social annoyance, a commonplace occurrence of disagreeable import, a moment's pique, have often brought about historic changes, the real cause whereof lies deep in the secret working of men's hearts and can only be understood by each one to himself. Thus in Wirtemberg's eighteenth-century record, the homely, unpleasant, trifling scene on Christmas Eve wrought a change in the history, destined to influence the affairs of the country for many years.

The Graevenitz returned to the Jaegerhaus profoundly humiliated, deeply wounded. The Duchess-mother's remarks had been embarrassing and painful; each word as a finger of scorn pointed at that disgraceful bargain with Wuerben, at the recollection whereof Wilhelmine winced. But when Johanna Elizabetha snatched the Erbprinz away from her as though her very touch was contamination for the child, her whole being had shuddered with the ignominy. She knew herself to be accounted vile, one of the outcasts from whose proximity every virtuous woman must shrink and instinctively seek to protect all she loves, all she esteems pure. There is a terrible anguish to the outcast woman in this withdrawal from her of a child. Suddenly, she learns to measure her shame with a new gauge: by the lofty instinct of a mother's reverence for her child's fair innocence. Then the pariah realises that she is thrust beyond the pale of human purity. She has chosen the black mud of vice as her portion, and her presence reeks; she is tainted, and may not approach the pure.

If in the stillness of that Christmas night Wilhelmine, realising this, agonised, as countless women have realised and suffered, the next morning she showed no sign of the night's anguish. Unless her mood of unrelenting decision was the outcome thereof.

She had decided to present to Eberhard Ludwig two alternatives: either Johanna Elizabetha must retire to a dower-house, leaving the favourite mistress of Stuttgart, or the court of Wirtemberg must follow their Duke and the Landhofmeisterin to Tuebingen, Urach, or wherever it suited her to direct, leaving the Duchess in a mournful, deserted Stuttgart.

In any case, it must be provided that no possibility should exist of an humiliation such as she had suffered on the preceding evening. And as she intended to remain at the head of Wirtemberg's court, it was imperative Johanna Elizabetha should be removed. Murder no longer being politic—the Emperor had frightened the Graevenitz off that track—it remained to devise some other scheme whereby the Duchess could be rendered unobnoxious.

Upon Eberhard Ludwig's arrival at the Jaegerhaus, he was immediately informed of his mistress's decision. Again a small event precipitated the formation of an important plan. Johanna Elizabetha had wept incessantly during the Christmas Eve supper, and the Duchess-mother's sharp tongue had rasped the Duke's irritable nerves till he had lost control of his temper and had roughly bidden his wife and mother to leave him in peace. There had followed a painful scene. Thus his Highness was well disposed towards any scheme which would release him from his inharmonious family circle. Yet he hesitated to acquiesce in the daring project of the entire removal from Stuttgart of court and government. Wirtemberg had been governed at Stuttgart, and the chief ducal residence had been there since the twelfth century. As to Johanna Elizabetha's retirement to a dower-house he reminded Wilhelmine that the proposal had been made, and that the Duchess's answer was decisive: so long as she did not mourn her husband's death she would remain in residence at Stuttgart's castle. The Duke added that he had no power to force her to leave.

Serenissimus and the Landhofmeisterin were together in the famous yellow damask room of the Jaegerhaus. The blue-tiled stove radiated a pleasant warmth, and from the windows the lovers could see the snow-covered Graben, the main thoroughfare of the town. The cheerful jingle of sleigh-bells rang out as the peasants' sledges glided over the snow. The Christmas Day service in the Leonards Kirche had ended, and the traditional dole of silver pieces had been distributed in the Duke's name, an old custom of mediaeval times.

It was one of those absolutely still winter mornings, so fraught with peace, so purified by the great white silence of snow. Something of the artificial elegance, the stilted formality of the eighteenth century with its scrupulous apeing of French airs, mannerisms, and vices, seemed to fall from the lovers in the Jaegerhaus, and for an hour they dreamed of simple natural homely peace. Alas! their dream was of such a life together. Like most dreams it was based on an impossibility.

A peasant couple in a sledge passed the window. The man, a sturdy, thick-set figure in the Wirtemberg peasant's short, well-fitting, dark-blue coat, adorned with rows of round knob silver buttons. He wore a peaked fur cap drawn down over the ears. The woman was in a thick blue frieze cape and elaborate Sunday headdress. She had slipped her hand through her husband's arm and they were talking gaily together. Eberhard Ludwig pointed towards them and a sigh escaped his lips.

'There is the peace of two loving hearts. They are happier than we, for their love is duty, their duty love,' he said sadly.

'Alas!' she answered; but she knew that for her such peace was not, and that she would not have wished for it; yet a regret smote her, a yearning to be all she was not. And with this pang came the bitter recollection of her painful humiliation. Her face hardened. 'That happiness is only possible in the protection of the strong,' she said. 'Do you think yonder peasant would suffer his beloved to be scorned, to be insulted? The Duke of Wirtemberg alone cannot protect the woman he loves.'

Eberhard Ludwig drew back from her.

'How cruel you are, dear heart,' he said, and a great sadness lay in his voice. She told him that the truth was often cruel to hear; that she but spoke these things because he let himself drift into weak conniving at the intrigues of Johanna Elizabetha. Then she recounted the petty spite and the thousand taunts to which she was subjected. She painted Stuttgart in sombre colours, the dullness, the stiffness. Why should Wirtemberg be the least brilliant, least gay, of all the German courts? She talked of Berlin and the splendours of the newly made King Frederick I. Of Dresden with the Elector-King of Poland, Augustus the Strong; of his splendid residence, the Zwinger, which, like an enchanted palace, had been built in so short a span, and to whose marvels each day was added a wonderful chamber, a gilded dome, or a fair work of art.

Why should not peace and happiness reign in Wirtemberg with splendour and gaiety? Why should not a gracious palace rise to rival even the glories of Versailles? She drew the picture with sure strokes, each word an added colour in the vision of a life of tranquil yet brilliant ease and distinguished magnificence.

Eberhard Ludwig, caught by the flame of her eloquence, flared into enthusiasm, and they fell to discussing which town or castle should be the chosen spot for their new court. Urach, Tuebingen, Wildbad, all were reviewed. They spoke no longer of whether the great flitting should take place; it was now merely a question of where and how it should be accomplished. From which it may be seen that Wilhelmine, as usual, had won the day.



CHAPTER XVI

LUDWIGSBURG

'And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the Princess he loved.'

ABT VOGLER.

FIVE leagues north of Stuttgart, in the heart of the forest, stood the small hunting castle, the Erlachhof, whither Eberhard Ludwig often fled from the world and for many peaceful days lived the life of hunter. In these woods he wandered in early spring, here on summer nights he had slept beneath the trees, dreaming the dreams of his poet nature.

The Erlachhof had been greatly rebuilt, his Highness having commanded many alterations and improvements in the old castle. Since the year 1704 the various works had progressed right well. The gardens were already famous far and wide, and all Europe had added to their wealth: tulips from Holland, carnations and roses from France, oleanders and passion-flowers from Italy, while Spain had furnished orange-trees and myrtles. And here it was that Wilhelmine decided the great palace should be built.

The Erlachhof, from a gentle, simple, old-world German maiden, was to be transformed into a queen among palaces. Thus the daring favourite willed it: a princely pleasure-house to rival Versailles.

The Italian architect Frisoni was called. An artist of no mean merit, and pupil of Jules Hardouin Mansard, the chief architect of Versailles, where Frisoni had worked at the plans together with his master. The Italian arrived: a small, dapper man, ridiculous in his huge powdered wig, his little brown monkey face peering out of the curled white locks. Her Excellency desired a palace on the same model as the fine French palazzo? Nothing easier! No? An original design, then, but of that style? Ah! more facile still! Cost? A trifle to so noble and magnificent a prince as Monseigneur Altissimo the Duke of Wirtemberg. One almost expected the vast structure to rise from the ground in a night, so easy did it seem from the man's account!

The German gentlemen employed at the Erlachhof were deposed from power, and their dominion given over to Frisoni. Never was there such a stir in Wirtemberg. All the quarries rendered stone. Each village sent its most skilled workmen, and Frisoni despatched messengers to Italy to summon all the disengaged talent to the tremendous enterprise. In swarms they arrived—black-browed, olive-skinned, chattering like apes. And the little monkey in the flowing white peruke took direction. But first, the spiritual needs of the workmen must be considered; and the Graevenitz, raging with impatience in Stuttgart, was forced to look on while a Catholic chapel was built near the Erlachhof, ere ever the palace was begun.

The Wirtemberg workmen murmured, grumbled, finally mutinied. They would not work with chattering idolaters.

'Let them go, the German louts,' said Frisoni; 'I have better workmen in Italy.' So a new army arrived.

'Popery in our midst! The witch is bringing back Antichrist to Wirtemberg!' said Stuttgart.

The Geheimraethe informed Serenissimus that Frisoni's monetary demands were excessive. Forstner was despatched to look into the affair. He was appointed Grand Master of the works. Frisoni raged. The gulden had a way of flowing into Forstner's pocket, and, so Frisoni vowed, but few came out again.

Constantly the Duke and the Landhofmeisterin thundered up to the Erlachhof in their coach and six. Three times a week the favourite flew into a passion and rated Forstner for the tardiness of the building. He referred her to Frisoni, who referred her back to the Grand Master of the works. The plans were completed, the men worked hard, yet delays were frequent, he owned; but the builders, knowing themselves worthy of their hire, struck work when they went unpaid.

'Unpaid?' roared the Duke; 'when I have disbursed four hundred thousand gulden?'

'Look into the matter, your Highness, and you will know,' answered the architect.

Forstner was arraigned at Stuttgart. He arrived, accompanied by a secretary and several big ledgers. The accounts seemed in order, certainly.

'Justice!' implored poor Forstner, 'for my honour as a gentleman!'

'Ask the workmen!' shrieked Frisoni, and they summoned a deputation of the Italian stone-cutters. They swore they had not been paid for months. The Madonna and all the saints knew how they starved.

'Where is the money?' asked the perplexed Duke, and was answered by so many contending truths from each side that he could but be aware that some one, many, or all parties were lying.

Obviously some one must be removed in order to simplify this tangle, but who? 'Who is guilty?' mourned Serenissimus. The Landhofmeisterin's argument was clear enough: 'We cannot waste time in seeking the criminal. Some one has to disappear from the scene; exit therefore the least useful! Probably Frisoni lies, but he is an admirable architect. Surely the Italian workmen lie; they do not look like starving creatures, but they are wonderful masons. Forstner is of no use to me; on the contrary, he incommodes me with his virtuous reasonings. Therefore, exit Forstner!'

'My honour is wounded, I will depart!' wailed this estimable personage; and he forthwith craved Eberhard Ludwig's permission to leave Wirtemberg.

'God speed you hence!' cried the Landhofmeisterin; and Forstner departed, thinking he went of his own free will.

'My four hundred thousand gulden!' bewailed Serenissimus.

'Procure more from the Geheimraethe, and refuse to pay arrears to the workmen,' counselled Wilhelmine. Which course being adopted and peacefully accepted by the Italians, it would look as though they had, in truth, received their due. But no one has ever known where went the four hundred thousand gulden.

Forstner retired to Strassburg, and for several years there was no word of him.

The building at the Erlachhof went on apace now. Gulden flowed regularly and without stint, and each day more foreigners arrived to give their talents in return for broad gold pieces. Painters, sculptors, gilders came from north and south, and the Wirtembergers looked on aghast. Then was issued an astounding order. His Highness commanded some seven hundred of Stuttgart's rich merchants and burghers, also each trade guild in the country, to construct at their expense a number of houses near the Erlachhof. In this arbitrary decree, for the first time, the new palace was officially styled Ludwigsburg, after its lavish creator, Eberhard Ludwig.

The guilds of trade protested loudly, asking what it would advantage them to have houses in Ludwigsburg. The merchants and burghers followed suit. They received scant consideration of their protest. If they would not obey, his Highness would find himself compelled to levy a tax upon them. A tribute so exorbitant as to cripple them for years; whereas did they obey, he promised to purchase each mansion which the builder did not desire to inhabit. It was the better way, and forthwith the building began. But there was a further clause in the ducal mandate: the houses must be constructed according to Frisoni's plans and drawings, approved by his Highness. Again the burghers protested, but they were silenced by the Duke's promise to purchase.

Not only was a magnificent palace to be erected, but a town was to be conjured up as well, and from Frisoni's plans it appeared that it was to be a town of courtiers' houses. Bitter discontent reigned at Stuttgart, and the guards round the Jaegerhaus were doubled.

But there was rejoicing in the Graevenitz camp. Things were going admirably for the satellites, the grasping, hungry parasites. Madame de Ruth and Zollern alone might have spoken some moderating word, but the old courtesan was swept off her feet by Wilhelmine's brilliancy, and Zollern dreamed of Ludwigsburg as a new Catholic centre.

Time did not hang heavy on Wilhelmine's hands during the years which elapsed ere the Corps de Logis and the two small pavilions at Ludwigsburg were completed. In spite of the frantic haste with which the work was carried on, it was found impossible for the Duke to take up his residence in his new palace till the spring of 1711.

Meanwhile a new project engrossed the Landhofmeisterin's attention. Although she fully intended to occupy the palace itself, she deemed it expedient to possess an independent castle at Ludwigsburg, and on the foundations of the Schafhof, another small hunting lodge near the old Erlachhof, she caused a miniature summer palace to be erected. This she named La Favorite. It was constructed according to a plan in Mansard's 'Chateaux Joyeux.'

The Schafhof had been connected with the Erlachhof by a magnificent avenue of chestnut-trees, which remained for the most part intact save where a few trees had been cut to leave space for the fine terracing on the north side of the new Corps de Logis of Ludwigsburg. Still there was a shady avenue, commencing from the lowest terrace and following the gentle rise of the ground up to the Schafhof. This avenue she of course retained, merely causing the branches to be cut back, in order to leave an unbroken view of La Favorite from the windows of the Corps de Logis.

A host of gardeners laboured at the wood round the Chateaux Joyeux, turning the rough ground into a series of gracious flowering parterres.

The interior of Wilhelmine's little palace was a dream of beauty. Every room was panelled in white, and each panel encircled by a graceful design in gold, which terminated in gorgeous devices on the ceilings. For the most part the rooms were curtained with the Graevenitz yellow. The floors were a triumph of the wood-inlayer's art, the chairs and tables were of gilt or of inlaid rosewood. It was a house of sunshine: all Wilhelmine's windows looking full southward or westward, while on the colder north and east sides were the domestics' apartments.

At length, in the July of 1711, the Corps de Logis and the small adjoining pavilions were ready for occupation, and the long eastern and western side-wings were so nearly completed that it was possible to lodge the chief personages of the court, and the army of serving men and women. The garden terracing was terminated, and the water for the numerous fountains laid on.

La Favorite was ready for its capricious namesake, and the town of Ludwigsburg counted some two hundred new houses. The old posting inn, formerly a dilapidated peasant's habitation, barnlike and unpromising enough to the traveller, had become a fine mansion with many guest chambers. The peasant innkeeper, who regarded every foreigner as an intruder, was replaced by a magnificent gentleman with condescending manners.

Enterprising venders of all sorts hurried to the new centre of opulence. Already an obsequious personage from Paris had taken up his abode in a room of one of the new houses, and a painted board hanging from his window informed the passers-by that he was permitted to style himself Coiffeur to her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin, to Serenissimus the Duke, and to the court in general. Along with this gentleman arrived several spruce ladies, one of whom was reported to be his wife, but opinions varied as to which of the eight possessed this honour. These demoiselles were expert dressmakers, and plied many other trades necessary for the beautifying of court ladies. A French corset-maker appeared on the scene, and a famous vender of cosmetics. In fact, there were not wanting all the elements which must ever be at hand for serving the whimsies and necessities of noble dames. The titles of these court purveyors were in the Landhofmeisterin's keeping, and were only procurable by payment of a good round sum.

* * * * *

The sun was sinking in a glory over the grim mount of Hohenasperg, that sinister, frowning fortress-prison which threatened conveniently near to Ludwigsburg, ready to lodge those unfortunate enough to incur the displeasure of Serenissimus, or, more accurately, of her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin. The departing sun left a flaming radiancy which hung over the 'mansarde' roofs of Ludwigsburg, and was reflected again and again in the waters of the hundred garden fountains.

All day a hurrying stream of vehicles had rumbled into the courtyard, setting down the servants and effects of his Highness of Wirtemberg, and of the lady who ruled his destiny. Frisoni was in a mighty pother; he ran round the room excitedly, moving a chair, smoothing out a fold in the curtains, drawing a table to another position. He hopped hither and thither like some gay little monkey. Suddenly a tremendous shout went up from the three thousand Italian workmen who had been permitted to assemble near the gilded gates to witness the arrival of the court.

First came a large detachment of the Silver Guard, which were to take up quarters in the newly completed barracks at Ludwigsburg. Then followed a company of Cadets a Cheval, two hundred youths of noble family attired in crimson uniforms with black velvet slashings and silver braidings. After these rode an hundred equerries to his Highness, uniformed in light blue with silver facings. Then came a file of richly painted coaches conveying the holders of court charges, each coach escorted by four mounted troopers. Then the musicians on white horses with gorgeous red velvet and gold trappings. A second detachment of the Silver Guard numbering about five hundred, and at last the great gilded coach and six hove into sight. On both sides rode Cadets a Cheval, their ordinary crimson and black slashed uniforms embellished by short cloaks of silver cloth, which fell from each youth's shoulders on to the horse's haunches. In the coach sat his Highness on the left, and the Landhofmeisterin on the right, the seat which custom, etiquette, and morality set apart for the Duchess, who, poor soul, mourned in solitude at Stuttgart, while her place in the pageant was taken by the beautiful, evil woman, Wilhelmine von Graevenitz. But oh! how lovely she was, this adventuress! She looked indeed well fitted to be the chief personage of this magnificence. Her garments, as usual, were of golden yellow; on her flowing, powdered curls she wore a little round hat with a waving white plume, fastened by a diamond clasp. On her breast glittered the broad riband and the white enamel stag, whose antlers bore the diamond cross of the order of St. Hubertus. The little hat was strangely like a crown; the baton of the Landhofmeisterin's office, which she held in her hand, resembled a sceptre: it was of gold, and ablaze with precious stones. A travesty, no doubt, an absurdity, an insolence, but how fine it all looked! The Duke wore a white satin long-coat, embroidered with gold, and on his breast shone the St. Hubertus stag and cross. Truly the prince of some fable, seated beside a gorgeous princess.

Behind the golden coach followed two hundred life guards, uniformed in white and silver, and with drawn swords. Then came his Highness's forest guards, in green, with silver bandoliers and hunting horns, each with the white St. Hubertus stag and cross embroidered large upon the breast. After these rode the court pages, the Duke's secretaries, the officers of the household. And finally, three companies of the Wirtemberg regiments which had fought at Blenheim under Eberhard Ludwig.

A crowd of peasants from neighbouring villages had gathered outside the gates of Ludwigsburg; they raised a shout when they saw their Duke. He bowed, and the Landhofmeisterin also bent her head in dignified salutation. Immediately the shouting ceased, and a low ominous groan went up, intermingled with sibilant hissings. Wilhelmine grew pale, and shot a glance of hatred towards the peasants. His Highness spoke rapidly in a low tone to the cadet who rode at his elbow. The youth galloped back along the line of the cortege, and delivered an order to the captain of the 1st Regiment of Wirtemberg Cavalry. And as the gilded coach rolled in at the palace gates, Wilhelmine heard with satisfaction the howls and curses of the peasant crowd, which was being dispersed by the soldiers' swords.

When the Landhofmeisterin entered the palace of Ludwigsburg, the military brass instruments and drums in the courtyard ceased playing, and as the lovers passed over the threshold a strain from graceful, delicate, stringed instruments greeted them.

'Welcome to our house of harmony!' whispered Serenissimus, bending to kiss his mistress's hand.

Slowly and with dignity they were led by Frisoni through the beautiful rooms—the huge, gilded banqueting hall, the ball-rooms, the withdrawing-rooms, the picture-gallery, the audience-chamber, the card-rooms, the theatre. The little Italian caught the note of Wilhelmine's ceremony, and he showed Ludwigsburg to her as though she were a princess bride, entering for the first time the palace of her new dominions, instead of an enterprising mistress, part designer and wholly inspirer of each nook and corner of a nation's ruin in stone and marble.

They passed up the broad white marble staircase, and Frisoni solemnly conducted them to his Highness's private apartments—the antechamber, the audience-closet, the writing-room, and the sleeping-room.

'The apartments of her Excellency are situated in the west pavilion. If your Highness wishes to inspect them we must pass downstairs once more, to gain the entrance to the pavilion,' he said gravely.

Eberhard Ludwig, smiling, bade him lead the way, though, of a truth, he knew a shorter way by a small door leading through the statue gallery directly from his apartments to the decorously closed pavilion.

In solemn procession, Serenissimus leading the Landhofmeisterin, preceded by Frisoni as guide, passed down the chief stair, and from the lower antehall to the door of the west pavilion. Here were the apartments of the great Landhofmeisterin. On the ground floor the room for her personal attendant, the wardrobe-room, her Excellency's library and business-room, where the various affairs of the Landhofmeisterin's office were to be transacted. Then up a narrow stair to the first floor to a large antechamber, a sleeping-room, a private writing-room, and above another small stair leading to the powdering-room.

All these rooms were little masterpieces of various arts, chief among which that of the wood-inlayer—the floors, the walls, the doors being profusely inlaid with precious woods. Everywhere the arms of Wirtemberg were interwoven with the Wuerben and Graevenitz devices, and with the emblems of the chase and of music—symbols of the Duke-hunter and his beloved musician-mistress.

The courtiers who followed his Highness and the Landhofmeisterin expressed their admiration discreetly, Zollern and Madame de Ruth leading the chorus of approval.

At length the ceremonious inspection was concluded, and the courtiers hurried away to view their own quarters, leaving her Excellency in the pavilion, and Serenissimus in his sumptuous Corps de Logis.

When the courtiers' steps ceased to echo in the corridor, Wilhelmine drew a little golden key from her bosom and, approaching a panel in the antechamber wall on the first floor, fitted it into a keyhole which was artfully hidden in the intricacies of the inlaid design. She turned the lock and a small door flew open. She stepped through and found herself in the corridor of statues. Directly facing the hidden panel door she found another similar lock masked beneath the outstretched hand of one of the many plaster Amorini. Here again a small door sprang open beneath her touch, and she entered the Duke's sitting-room. Her entry, however, was further hidden by an arras of Gobelin tapestry fitted on a wooden partition running down one side of his Highness's room. At the end nearest the entrance to his sleeping-chamber, a small portion of this partition flew back upon touching a spring, and revealed a narrow doorway. Little wonder that both Eberhard Ludwig and Wilhelmine smiled when the Italian conducted them down and up the staircases and through innumerable rooms ere they reached the apartments of the Landhofmeisterin!

Serenissimus was standing at the window of his writing-room overlooking the courtyard. In his hand was a closely written page, and his face wore a look of distress and perplexity. He turned sharply when he heard Wilhelmine's step, and, flushing deeply, he crushed the paper into the breast of his coat. She was quick to note the movement, and the Duke's evident embarrassment.

'A letter, Monseigneur, which you would hide from me?' she said. Like most women in illegitimate positions she was easily suspicious, and all letters, petitions, every scrap of paper destined for her lover, were carried for inspection to the omnipotent Landhofmeisterin ere they were permitted to reach their destination.

'Yes, Madame, a letter from a private friend,' returned the Duke, his embarrassment turning to anger.

'Ah! something not intended for me? I crave your Highness's forgiveness. I came to say a word of my great happiness in being indeed installed in our House of Harmony,' she sneered bitterly, and turning, would have hurried back to her apartments; but Serenissimus followed her, and laying his hand on her arm drew her towards him.

'There are things in each life which can never be told. Beloved, there is a seal on my lips which honour has impressed with her fair image. I cannot tell you what is in this letter. Believe me, it is no pleasant thing that I hide from you; it would not make you happy to read these lines. Also, they are unimportant, for I do not heed them.'

She prayed him to tell her. How could she rest if she knew he had a thought apart from her? It gave her anxiety, she said, that it was something disagreeable. She used all her arts of attraction, of seduction, but he remained obdurate. Then she flamed into anger and left him with a bitter word.

To celebrate his Highness's entry into Ludwigsburg, a masked ball had been commanded to take place on the evening following the arrival of the court. The Duke and his mistress met at supper after the episode of the letter, but the Landhofmeisterin avoided his Highness's eye and seemed absorbed in conversation with Zollern. During the evening she played faro at her own table, and early took her leave, pleading that she was fatigued. On the morning of the masked ball his Highness attended a stag-hunt, and thus it fell out that he and Wilhelmine did not meet to discuss the vexed question of the letter.

The beautiful ballroom at Ludwigsburg was brilliantly illuminated by a thousand waxen tapers which burned in the huge crystal chandeliers. The Landhofmeisterin's own musicians discoursed rhythmical strains from the gallery, and a gay motley crowd moved on the inlaid polished floor. There were dominoes of every colour, bizarre, fantastic shapes; and somehow this masked assemblage had a strangely sinister appearance, a mysterious lurking menace seemed to emanate from it.

The Landhofmeisterin was easily recognisable from her great height. For a moment she had contemplated dressing in man's clothes, but Serenissimus had dissuaded her. The Duke's domino was of 'Graevenitz yellow' of the same hue as that of the Landhofmeisterin. Madame de Ruth had refused to go masked.

'My old face is mask enough,' she said; and Zollern, delighted to escape the ordeal of a travesty, had declared he would keep his old friend company. So the two sat together and made merry over the grotesque appearance of the other guests.

At first, many had approached the undominoed couple and, under cover of carnival licence, some had ventured to say sharp things to the old courtesan, but each in turn retired discomfited before the sting of Madame de Ruth's quick wit. The Landhofmeisterin stood near to her friend. She felt strangely lonely in this disguised crowd, and Serenissimus held aloof from her. She saw him exchanging compliments with a light blue domino, from whose supple movements Wilhelmine guessed to be a young and graceful woman.

A sudden wave of jealous fear invaded the Landhofmeisterin's heart. And leaving her safe place behind Madame de Ruth and Zollern, she walked out into the crowd of revellers. Instantly several masks left the dancing, laughing, whirling main stream and approached the newcomer. 'Fair mask, come tread a measure!' 'Do you seek love or amusement here?' and many other meaningless absurdities were squeaked into her ear by some unwary ones who had not recognised the much-feared Landhofmeisterin in the tall yellow-clad figure. She shot a glance of contempt at her interlocutors and pushed past them. Of a sudden she was surrounded by a circle of red-garbed gnomes who danced round her. 'Let me pass, good people,' she said; and when they would not, she broke through the chain of their arms and hurried on. They would have followed, but a black mask caught the ringleader and whispered in his ear, and the laughing gnomes fell back murmuring together.

The Duke was still dallying with the blue domino; Wilhelmine saw him lead her to one of the windows which opened out on to the terraces. She followed swiftly, hardly hearing the comments and whispers of the revellers who took this occasion to convey insulting words to the hated woman. As she reached the window in whose balcony she knew her lover to be, she felt a hand on her arm. She turned angrily.

'What do you want? how dare you hinder me?' she said. It was a tall, thin domino who accosted her, entirely black, and with a skull and crossbones embroidered in white upon the breast. A startling figure, and to Wilhelmine's overwrought nerves it seemed to be the figure of Death come to snatch her life's glory and happiness from her in this her triumph of the completion of the palace.

'What do you want of me?' she said again, conquering her superstitious fear.

'I would speak to you, Madame; I have a warning to give you.' The voice was deep and low, and after the squeaky tones which the revellers affected in order to disguise their natural voices, this man's bass notes sounded hollow and funereal.

'Speak then here,' she answered.

'No; my warning must be given to you where none can hear,' he responded; and once more laying his black-gloved hand on her arm, he drew her away from the window towards a door which led down a short flight of steps into the moonlit garden. Did the man mean murder? It flashed across Wilhelmine that she was going blindly into danger. She paused on the topmost step of the flight.

'I will go no further; speak now, or I leave you here.' Her voice was calm, though her hands were trembling a little.

'I am sent to tell you that your hour has come; that your ill-gotten power, your evil triumphs, are waning.' His voice was deep, sonorous, impressive.

'Who sends you?' she asked. Coming from the brilliantly lit rooms and the stir and noise of the ball, this sudden interlude in the still, moonlit garden, with the strange, sinister, black-robed figure, seemed to her like a dream.

'I am sent by one you have ruined, in the name of the many you have injured! and yet, in mercy, I bid you fly while there is time!' the stranger answered.

'Ah! Mercy? This is some absurd fiction; no one has mercy upon me,' she said bitterly.

'Yes, I have. I came to deliver my message, and yesterday I saw your entry into Ludwigsburg. I saw the peasants cruelly driven back by the soldiers' swords. I saw the great monument you have raised here to your shame, this mad, mock court of yours, and I hated you! but then I saw your youth, your beauty, and I vowed I would warn you, that you might carry this, your true wealth, to some atonement for your sins. I bid you fly; the Duke has information against you which must spell ruin for you—ruin and death.'

'You are mad,' she said quietly.

'No; I am not mad, unless compassion is madness.'

She drew off her mask, and, in the clear white moonlight, turned her face upon him—that strange, haunting face of hers, which Eberhard Ludwig said no man could forget.

'And so you had compassion because you saw me?' she laughed. 'Your mission is absurd, but I forgive you because some generous thought was yours even for the Graevenitzin.' She was all woman at that moment; the hard, cruel oppressor, the ruling Landhofmeisterin, was banished from her being, she was fascination incarnate.

'How beautiful you are—how beautiful——!' the black mask whispered.

'Tell me who you are,' she said, and smiled at him.

'An enemy who would turn friend, and more—if he looked too long at you,' he answered slowly.

'Tell me your name,' she asked once more.

'No; my name you will never know, only I have warned you.'

'I thank you,' she said gravely, and gave him her hand. He bent and kissed it, and vanished into the shadow of the garden. She stood a moment looking after her unknown visitor. Ruin and death, he had said. She pondered on why this stranger should have warned her. Evidently an enemy with an evil plan against her, turned aside by some man's whim, some sudden mood caused by the sight of her beauty. Flight, he counselled, flight for her! No! she would battle to the last, but she would not neglect the unknown's warning. In a flash it came to her that this man was connected with the letter which the Duke had refused to communicate to her. She replaced her mask and returned to the ballroom. Still the same monotonous whirling crowd, the pattering feet of the dancers, the din of the music.

She searched for Serenissimus. He was standing with a group of masks at the lower end of the hall, and did not observe her. She made her way slowly through the crowd to the other side of the room, and slipped through the door into the ante-hall. Immediately two lackeys sprang forward to inquire her Excellency's pleasure. She waved them away and passed onward, out to the terrace, and towards her pavilion. The sentry at her door saluted her, but she gained her own ante-hall without meeting any of her waiting men, even Maria was gaping in the crowd in the courtyard probably.

Wilhelmine paused a moment in her antechamber on the first floor. She listened attentively, and called Maria under her breath, but no answer came. Then she drew out the little key, approached the door leading to the statue gallery and opened it gently. The gallery was in darkness, save where a faint white radiance was reflected from the moonlit garden without, but that side of the palace lay in deep shadow. She crept on and groped for the lock beneath the plaster Amorino's hand. At first she could not find it, but after some moments she felt the tiny keyhole, and, fitting the key, she turned it and the door swung open. She glided in behind the arras, and found the spring which opened the partition. She listened; there was no sound from the room within. She pressed the spring, the tapestry door opened silently beneath her touch, and she passed into the Duke's writing-closet. Here the moon shone full in, white and ghostly. Wilhelmine's mind flew back to that far-off night at Guestrow, when in the moonlight she had stolen the key from under her mother's pillow. How she had trembled! She had been a child in experience then, a very different being from the strong, self-confident woman she knew herself to be nowadays. And yet she trembled in the moonlit room as she had trembled then. What was that? The moonlight falling in sheeny silver through the window, seemed to her to take the shape of a tall, white woman's figure. She remembered the grim old legend of that Countess of Orlamuende, murderess of little children, who haunted all the palaces of her descendants. In the castle at Stuttgart, they said, the White Lady walked, her pale trailing garments streaked with blood. Could she wander here too in new, gorgeous Ludwigsburg? Almost Wilhelmine turned and fled, but the remembrance of her dire peril came to her. She looked bravely at the moonlight—there was no ghost there; it was only the Lady Moon, witch of the night, throwing her cold, false smiles through the casement. Wilhelmine went forward boldly. She must find the letter at any cost; its contents threatened her, and she must know.

The Duke's bureau was locked. She pressed the secret spring in vain. Was she doomed to be baffled, after all? She remembered that her own bureau was identical with his Highness's. Resolutely, with that patience which is born of hazardous undertakings, she glided away through the arras door, through the black gallery, and regained her apartments. She heard a movement in her sleeping-room, and Maria came to her.

'Your Excellency, pray forgive that I was not here.'

Even Maria must not know why she had left the ballroom, she thought.

'Go to Madame de Ruth's apartments. A black silk domino lies in the wardrobe; go, bring it to me. I would change my colour and play a merry jest upon some friends.' The maid departed. Now all was clear for some time, for Madame de Ruth's apartment lay at the far end of the east wing. Swiftly she sought the key of her bureau; it was hidden in a secret drawer beneath the writing-desk. She took it, and passed through the little door again. Once more she listened behind the arras; it seemed to her as if something moved. She paused, then gently reopened the tapestry door and peered in. The room lay silent, deserted, white and ghostly as before. She passed in, and fitted her key into the bureau. The lock yielded and the bureau flew open. Letters, documents, drawings, plans for hunting excursions—all the usual occupants of Eberhard Ludwig's bureau. She could see enough in the moonlight. Ah! here a creased paper. She caught it up and examined it. Yes; this must be the thing she feared—four large pages filled with cramped characters. She looked more closely. Forstner's writing! She almost laughed. This, then, was what his Highness had hidden so scrupulously from her! Thanks to the unknown's warning, she had come on the track of her most deadly enemy. Had the black mask not spoken, she might have forgotten the letter. She closed the bureau carefully and stepped behind the arras, shutting the tapestry door carefully. She was now in perfect darkness. She groped along the wall to find the lock of the gallery door. Great God! what was that? A movement near her, an icy touch on her hand. The White Lady's death-grip! and yet better that, she thought, than any human being's presence; better that than for any mortal to have seen her rifling the Duke's bureau. She sought wildly for the lock. At last she found it and slipped in the key. As the door sprang open something pushed past her—a huge, black shape.

'Melac!' she called in a strained voice, and the powerful beast came to her and rubbed his cold nose upon her hand. Only the wolf-hound, then, who had been sleeping in the darkness behind the arras. She laughed when she remembered her ghastly fear of the White Lady's death-grip!

She regained her own room. Maria had not returned from Madame de Ruth's apartment. She kindled a light from her steel tinder-casket and set a waxen taper aglow. Then she began to read Forstner's letter.

'Monseigneur, my Prince, and once my friend! Though it has been your pleasure to discredit me, I cannot rest until I have let you know the truth. You are being grossly abused, your noble trust and love made mock of by a creature too vile for human words to describe. A woman, who to her other lovers holds you up to scorn and ridicule! yes, ridicule of your passion, making mock, betraying the secrets of your bed. Besides, it is she who has the gulden which you accused me of purloining; she to whom half your revenues are carried, and you are doled out a paltry sum which, after all, you spend again upon this creature. You are weary of her, too; all your Dukedom knows that right well—weary of her, and you dare not dismiss her! The people laugh: your subjects, your friends, strangers, other princes, all Europe laughs. See her! observe her hideous faults, her foul blemishes of mind and body, her filthy actions!' Then followed the names of his rival lovers, and a list of the vast sums she had filched from the ducal treasury. All this set forth so cleverly, with such apparent proof, that she trembled as she read. There were official business transactions accurately quoted and put in such a light as to seem to be robberies. It was a dangerous letter for her—half truth, half falsehood, difficult to unravel, impossible to deny entirely. 'Honour binds you, you say,' the epistle continued. 'Ah! my Prince! you have a toy which has turned to a viper in your hand! Throw it from you! Other princes have done so, and the world has applauded. Take a fair and noble mistress, one younger, less rapacious. Consider this woman: already she grows gross; in a few years' time she will be a mountain of flesh; her eyes are dimming, her lips are paler, her teeth less white than they were when she came from her obscure home.'

Wilhelmine, in all the magnificence of her beauty, of her maturity, read thus far quietly; then, raging, she sprang to her feet.

'I could have forgiven you some of your insults, Forstner, but this is too much! By God! by God! you shall suffer! I swear it by my salvation!'

She read on: details too disgusting, too gross to write down here, foul accusation upon accusation, hideous blasphemies against her bodily beauty.

Of a truth, not even a saint could have forgiven the writer of that letter—and Wilhelmine von Graevenitz was no saint.



CHAPTER XVII

THE BURNING IN EFFIGY

ON the morning following the masquerade, his Highness's Chief Officer of the Secret Service of Wirtemberg craved audience. The Secret Service had been instituted by Eberhard Ludwig after the murderous attack upon the Graevenitz in Duke Christopher's grotto. In the unquiet state of the country, rife with discontent and its attendant conspiracies, such a service was absolutely necessary; but, of course, this system of espionage was most unpopular, and as the Landhofmeisterin was credited with the institution of the Secret Service, the people's fear and hatred of her increased.

The Chief Officer had grave matters to communicate to his Highness: a plot to murder her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin had been discovered, and from intercepted papers it would appear that the conspirators also aimed at the Duke himself. It seemed that many influential persons were implicated.

The design was to induce his Highness to abdicate in favour of the Erbprinz, during whose minority Forstner was to be Premier, and the Duchess Johanna Elizabetha Regent of Wirtemberg. This portion of the conspiracy could be dealt with easily, but the murderous intent upon the Landhofmeisterin took a more serious aspect, as the Secret Service agents had procured information which led the Chief Officer to infer that the would-be assassins were actually in, or near, Ludwigsburg. It was, however, impossible to arrest every stranger on mere suspicion, for both Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart were full of country gentlemen who had been commanded to appear at the Mask Ball.

At mention of Forstner, his Highness went to his bureau to seek his erstwhile friend's letter. In vain he searched in drawer and secret panel. The letter had vanished. The four cadets, who stood sentry at the door of the Duke's apartment, were questioned; they had seen none enter. His Highness's private waiting-men were examined, and the soldiers of the guard who stood in the lower antehall. All answered that no one had passed through. The Chief Officer of the Secret Service himself had watched the entrance of the Corps de Logis during the preceding evening.

The Duke searched his bureau once more. He was greatly disturbed. Open warfare, a hand-to-hand combat, he said, were child's play to the horror of this lurking enemy, who evidently had access even to the private bureau. Zollern was requested to come and speak with the Duke; his advice was asked.

'Have you mentioned the matter to the Landhofmeisterin? She is very wise, and may be able to suggest some explanation,' said Zollern.

No; his Highness had not seen her Excellency. Then a sudden suspicion came to Eberhard Ludwig. She wished to see the letter; could she have purloined it?

'Do you know if the Landhofmeisterin left the ballroom during the last evening?' he asked Zollern.

No; the old Prince had observed her Excellency constantly, and she had not been absent from the dancing-hall, save for a few moments which she passed on one of the balconies in the company of a black domino, whose identity Monseigneur de Zollern had been unable to ascertain. Serenissimus dismissed his suspicions with relief. It is pain to doubt those we love.

Zollern took his leave, and the Duke desired the Secret Service officer to retire. He would ask her Excellency's advice in private. The Landhofmeisterin was summoned to attend his Highness on important business. After some little delay she arrived. Passing up the grand stairs, she was ceremoniously ushered into his Highness's presence.

His suspicion, though dismissed, rankled. Serenissimus greeted her coldly, and informed her of the letter's disappearance.

'Your Highness refers to a letter which I was not permitted to peruse? I regret that it should be lost, but you will remember that you considered it to be unimportant.'

The relationship between the lovers was strained.

'I do not discuss the importance of the document, Madame. Indeed, the smallest scrap of paper missing from my bureau would be a grave matter to me, as I should thus ascertain that some person had access to my private papers.'

The Duke spoke with cold displeasure. He had felt a pang of jealous suspicion when Zollern informed him of Wilhelmine's interview with the black domino; also, he was still angry with his mistress for her stormy exit after his refusal to show her Forstner's letter; and further, he was greatly incensed at the plot to force him to abdicate. All these causes wrought an iron firmness into his usually gentle voice. Wilhelmine felt this to be a crucial moment in her life.

'It would appear that your Highness sees fit to question me in a strange manner upon this trivial matter! I am not aware that the Landhofmeisterin's office is concerned with the superintendence of your Highness's private bureau,' she said haughtily.

'You know my meaning perfectly, Wilhelmine,' the Duke broke out furiously. 'Alas! like a pack of cards built in a card-house, my happiness, my pride, my triumph, my joy in my new palace, come falling about my head! How sad, how futile a thing is earthly joy!' He turned away, and bent to stroke Melac's head. The good beast had approached in seeming anxiety upon hearing the Duke's distressed voice.

Wilhelmine looked at his Highness for a moment in silence, and her face softened. After all, she loved Eberhard Ludwig, and in spite of her overweening prosperity, coupled with the world-hardness which marred her, there lingered something of tenderness in her love. Then, too, she was a consummate actress, and a being gifted with the womanly genius for charming, and therein lies sympathy. It is when this sympathetic spark is killed by the terrible blight of over-prosperity, that the deterioration of a woman takes place. Not all in a day, but gradually, the poison works: the first stage signalised by a cruel hardness to those they love; then an entire incapacity for tenderness; ultimately the hideous blight falls on the woman's charm, her voice, her face, her laugh, the essence of her being. God knows the tragedy of it; God alone can gauge the agony inflicted by the world-hardened women upon the hearts of those who love them; and God Himself punishes eventually, for: 'The mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceeding sure.'

Still in Wilhelmine there lingered a little tenderness for Eberhard Ludwig, and this taught her a surer way to her own safety than ever her brain could have shown her. She came to him and, laying her hand on his shoulder, she said: 'The world and my heart lie at your feet, Eberhard, beloved. You are fighting with some wild phantasy, some spectre which exists only in your own mind. See, we share all things, let me share your sorrow. Is it only the loss of this letter which distresses you? Oh! tell me; surely you will not shut me out from your life?'

Her voice charmed him as on that first day when he had called her Philomele, and he turned to her with his love shining in his eyes.

'Am I, indeed, scaring myself with a phantom?' he said, and a note of almost childlike appeal lay in his tone.

'Yes, only that,' she made answer, and, smiling, drew him to her. Then he told her the story of the plot against them, but he did not mention Forstner as the prime conspirator. She laughed.

'You are safe, for none can make you abdicate against your will; and I am safe because you protect me, beloved.'

'Safe? Yes; but ah! the letter! Who slinks past our guards and robs my bureau? It is hateful. I love to fight a man, but this lurking danger which I guess hidden behind each arras——'

'The letter? Are you sure you sought in each hiding-place of your bureau?' she said. Already in her mind a plan was forming whereby she could allay his fears and conquer his suspicions. Forstner's letter lay hidden in her bosom; she would replace it in the bureau-drawer while they searched, then, with the Duke's knowledge of Forstner's plot, she would break this dangerous enemy.

'Forgive me, Eberhard, but so many people search frantically and thus overlook the very object they seek! See, let us look through the papers together.'

She approached the bureau, and made believe to be mighty awkward with the fastening. His Highness unlocked the panel, and together they began a review of the tumbled documents within, Wilhelmine talking gaily the while.

'What is it like, this precious letter?—large? small?' she asked.

'A large paper in Forstner's writing,' returned the Duke, forgetting that she did not know whence came the letter.

'In Forstner's writing!' she exclaimed. 'And this you hide from me? The man is my deadly enemy, and, as you know now at last, but a false friend to you! You say the world is dark and evil to you; what is it to me when you, the love of my life, can harbour letters from my cruel enemy?'

She flung herself down on the chair beside the bureau, and burying her face in the papers on the writing-desk, burst into a flood of tears. Eberhard Ludwig fell on his knees at her feet, and in broken words implored her pardon. He kissed the hem of her garment, accused himself of treason to her, prayed her to be consoled.

'Give me water, I am faint!' she moaned. He sprang up and hastened to his sleeping-room to bring water for her. Now was her moment: with incredible swiftness she drew the letter from its hiding-place and slipped it under a bundle of papers and plans on the bureau. When his Highness returned carrying a goblet of water, he found his mistress still weeping bitterly with her face hidden on the writing-desk.

She drank the water while Eberhard Ludwig hung over her in anxious rapture, heaping reproaches upon himself for his cruelty, but she refused to be consoled.

'What can I do to prove to you that all my unworthy suspicions have vanished?' he cried in desperation.

'Tell me what was written in that letter; let me defend myself,' she answered quickly.

'You ask the one thing I may not do. I cannot,' he said sadly.

'And the letter is lost!' she cried; 'who knows what enemy of mine has got it? Alas! perhaps all the world will know the vile things this man has written, and you have let him go unpunished. All will know save the accused criminal! Oh! the injustice! the cruelty!'

The Duke shuddered.

'Yes, it is true; that terrible thing I had not remembered. O God! if I could but find that accursed letter! At least, no one but myself need have known of the foul accusations; but now that the letter is lost——'

Wildly he began to search once more in the bureau, and Wilhelmine almost laughed when she saw him lift the packet of papers under which she had slipped Forstner's letter. With a cry the Duke turned to her.

'Thank God! I have found it! It lay here beneath this bundle. Wilhelmine, beloved, now none can read these blasphemies against you,' he cried.

'So you tell me to my face that yonder paper is a blasphemy against me, a foul accusation, and you will not let me clear myself!' she cried wildly.

'I swore to Forstner that I would never, in spoken or written word, divulge his communications—never give or voluntarily let another take his letters. Unless you can divine what you wish to know, there is no help.' He laughed harshly.

'Divine what is in that letter?' she said in a musing tone.

Suddenly a thought came to her. She remembered each word of that horrible letter. It was necessary his Highness should know she knew, yet imperative that her knowledge should appear to have been gained in his presence.

Wilhelmine had studied many books of magic and innumerable accounts of occult manifestations. She was half-dupe, half-charlatan, and indeed she possessed much magnetic power.

Now in Bavaria, some years before this scene at Ludwigsburg, there had been discovered an extraordinary peasant-girl gifted with rare faculties of clairvoyance, thought-reading, ecstatic trances, prophecies, and the rest. An account of her short twenty years of vision-tortured life had been published by the doctor of her village—a crank, and supposed wizard himself. This pamphlet Wilhelmine had read, as she read all books concerning mysterious manifestations. His Highness, however, would never look at anything treating of magic or witchcraft. He honestly disapproved of such things, and feared them; though, in contradiction, he was much attracted by his mistress's strange powers, which he affected to doubt, yet, in truth, he was terribly afraid at times.

It was certain that he knew nothing of the Seer of Altbach, and thus Wilhelmine felt assured she might risk the shamming of one of the peasant-girl's feats, palming it off as an original accomplishment.

She continued to implore the Duke to show her the letter, but he was obdurate; honour bound him, he said.

At length Wilhelmine's scheme had matured in her fertile brain, and she was ready to begin her daring comedy.

'I cannot rest while I am ignorant of the accusations in that letter. There must be something terrible, some fearful wickedness against me, which you will not tell me, but which, like poison thrown into a well, will pollute each thought of me in your mind, till at length your love of me and your trust will die. Whereas, if I know of what I am accused, I can wrench out this poisonous root with the sword of Truth, for oh! love of mine, I am innocent, save for the sin of loving you.'

'And yet honour closes my lips! I swore to Forstner that his letters to me should never be divulged; and though he is doubtless a traitor to me, still I cannot absolve myself of my oath,' he answered sadly.

She stood up, and holding out both hands towards him, she said solemnly:

'Take both my hands in one of yours, look in my eyes, hold the letter on my brow, and I will tell you what he says. Thus your honour is cleared, for you have neither spoken nor given me the writing, but I shall have guessed.'

'What madness is this?' he cried angrily; 'your witch-working again! But if it calms you to play like this, I am ready to humour so ridiculous a whimsey.'

Half-laughing, half-annoyed, he took the letter from his pocket. Wilhelmine laid her two hands in one of his and gazed into his eyes.

For a moment she stood as though hesitating, and the Duke felt her hands flutter like caught birds. Her eyes seemed to look into some far distance. Slowly she began in a low voice:

'Monseigneur, my Prince, and once my friend, you are being grossly abused, your noble trust and love is made mock of by a creature too vile for human words. A woman, who to her other lovers holds you up to scorn and ridicule—yes, ridicule of your passion.' Her voice grew faint and faded into a whisper, and the hands which the Duke held trembled and twitched violently. Slowly, falteringly, she went on, sometimes reciting a whole sentence in the very words of the letter, sometimes only giving the gist; but always in the same low, monotonous voice, like the utterance of one who speaks in sleep.

The Duke stood rigid, fear and amazement written on his face. Once his hand, which held the letter to her brow, dropped to his side. Immediately the subtle comedian paused, moaning as though in physical pain. It was a magnificent bit of trickery; small marvel that his Highness was deceived.

When she had told him all the paper contained, she covered her face with her hands and fell to trembling as in an ague, moaning and sighing incessantly. In truth, she had worked herself into a fit of frantic emotion, and had her will been less strong, she must indeed have raved off into hysterics.

Now consider this thing. Here is a man who had lost a letter; who sought it; at length finding it safe in a locked bureau. The search takes place in the very presence of a being he had half accused of purloining the missing letter. This person, he is assured by a prince of the highest honour, has never left a crowded ballroom during the only hours when it would have been possible for her to have stolen the paper. Then he himself proposes, in jest, that she should guess the contents of a document, which he feels certain has been read by himself alone, and has merely been mislaid in a carefully locked bureau. This extraordinary feat she accomplishes in a seeming trance. Add to all this, that the woman is his beloved mistress, whom he ardently wishes to trust, and that often before she had told him she was gifted with occult powers. Is it matter of surprise that he implicitly believed Wilhelmine had accomplished a magic feat? White magic though; nothing evil here; on the contrary, almost a miracle, like some mediaeval ordeal through which her purity and innocence alone could have sustained her. Yet he questioned her.

Could she read any paper in that manner? She answered that she had never tried before. She spoke to him in gentle words, praying him to give good faith to her. She clung to him like a tired child. What man could resist her?

Then she talked of Forstner's conspiracy. She depicted the vileness of one who could write such a letter at the very hour when he was plotting to ruin the man to whom he penned words of passionate exhortation and affection. She laid stress upon the treason against Eberhard Ludwig, and he in return flamed into anger concerning the design to murder this clinging, appealing woman. Chivalry, honour, duty, bound him to protect her. Very subtly she led him on: to protect in this case must be to revenge her.

Then she lashed him to a fury against the traitor who had plotted against so lenient a prince. Taking the letter from his Highness (he let her have it now without demur), she went through the list of accusations, refuting each statement, throwing the blame upon Forstner for the various monetary defections which he himself, in this letter, had proved to exist in the Ludwigsburg building accounts. She pointed out that Forstner should be punished heavily, both in just revenge and as a warning to others. At last Eberhard Ludwig yielded, and promised that she should dictate Forstner's sentence.

* * * * *

Forstner tarried at Strassburg. He believed his letter would awaken the Duke from his long, evil, delicious dream; but when days, weeks, months passed without any change taking place at Ludwigsburg, and the Landhofmeisterin's triumph continued, Forstner's hopes waned. He dared not return to Wirtemberg, yet the care of his properties demanded his presence.

Meanwhile Eberhard Ludwig had permitted the Landhofmeisterin to work her will in the Forstner affair. Little guessed the poor fool, waiting at Strassburg, what a terrible net was being woven round him. Slowly, silently, with deadly patience, the Landhofmeisterin was collecting a thousand threads for this fabric. Documents, statements, even the accounts of Forstner's private monies were bribed from his estate agents; each letter that he wrote, everything, was gathered by the Secret Service and brought to the Landhofmeisterin's office, where the long chain of evidence was being linked together by the Graevenitz and Schuetz. She intended Forstner to be condemned, not only by the Duke's orders, but publicly, and on a charge so damning as to alienate all from him. Incidentally, the Duchess Johanna Elizabetha would be deeply implicated.

In the January of 1712 Forstner at Strassburg received some warning, and fled to Paris. Here, at least, he believed himself safe from the machinations of the all-powerful Graevenitz. True, he was implicated in that feeble plot to murder her, which had failed because the young man he had hired to do the deed had unaccountably disappeared, his fellow-conspirators having never seen or heard of him since the night of the Ludwigsburg masquerade. Forstner often wondered whether the youth was imprisoned in one of Wirtemberg's grim fortresses—Hohenasperg, Hohen-Urach, or Hohen-Neuffen. He shuddered when he remembered how men vanished into the gloom of these strongholds, which are built into the rock of the steep hills, and are inaccessible as an eagle's eyrie.

Yet proof was wanting to convict him of contriving murder or political disturbance, and, at least, he was safe in Paris. Lulled into carelessness by the silence from Wirtemberg, he showed himself abroad, even attending the genial, informal receptions of the Duchesse d'Orleans, that Princess of Bavaria who had succeeded, and by her sturdy, uncompromising treatment of the Duc d'Orleans, had revenged poor Henriette of England, his beautiful, brilliant, but little appreciated first wife.

Elizabeth Charlotte received Forstner with much condescension. Death had relieved her, in 1702, from her sickly, despicable spouse, and she was free to open her house to every German traveller, which, in his lifetime, Monsieur had always endeavoured to prevent.

One day when Forstner was journeying to visit the Duchesse d'Orleans, he was arrested in the King's name and conveyed to the Bastille, where he was informed that he was accused of treason to the Duke of Wirtemberg, and of intent to murder several great personages of his Highness's court. He was further informed that he would be sent to Stuttgart under escort as soon as the necessary arrangements could be completed.

In vain Forstner remonstrated that he could not be imprisoned in France for a political offence in Wirtemberg. In vain he protested and claimed the protection of Louis XIV. The King at Versailles was busied with the saving of his soul and with the doctoring of his gangrened knee. So the doors of the Bastille closed on Baron Forstner, and he was left to reflect upon the danger of casting aspersions on a woman's beauty.

After some months the rumour of Forstner's imprisonment reached the Duchesse d'Orleans, who had believed her compatriot returned to Germany. Now it was a ticklish thing for the Duchess to undertake intervention on behalf of a Protestant, for though she had joined the Church of Rome on her marriage to 'Monsieur,' still it was whispered in Paris that she had reprehensible leanings to the faith of her childhood.

Madame de Maintenon and the King were more than ever hostile towards heretics, and the Bavarian princess had received several sharp reproofs on the subject already.

Then came the news that Forstner had been condemned to death in Stuttgart, and that he was to be conveyed thither without delay.

The Duchesse d'Orleans journeyed to Versailles, and demanded an audience of her august brother-in-law. The King was in an ungracious mood. He received his late brother's wife coldly. He regretted that she should espouse the cause of this foreigner. Really, he had no intention of interfering in the affairs of any petty German prince. This was merely a question of international law. If this 'Baron de Forstnere' were in the Bastille, let him stay there. Louis asked angrily if he were expected to interest himself in such unimportant details, when he was so profoundly troubled with affairs of State. Little wonder that the King was not in a favour-granting humour. The Congress of Utrecht was discussing peace, and Louis saw that though he had actually gained the day in the Spanish Succession War, still France had lost hugely in blood and gold, and was to lose still more in colonies.

But Elizabeth Charlotte was not to be put off thus easily. If it came to hard words, no one was more competent than she was to utter truth unshrinkingly. Petty German princes indeed! Louis had been anxious enough to share in the inheritance from a petty German prince, when, at the death of her father without male heirs, the Roi Soleil had seen a chance of grasping a portion of the Bavarian Palatinate! And so she told him in her loud voice and uncouth French. Madame de Maintenon interposed: Why did her Royal Highness take so deep an interest in this 'Forstnere?' she asked.

'Because he is a Bavarian, and his father and mine were friends,' she was told by the Duchess.

'Ah! a Bavarian—then a Catholique?' the saintly Marquise supposed.

'No indeed!'

Things looked very black for Forstner. But the Duchesse d'Orleans played her trump card. Though a Protestant, Forstner was a virtuous man, and the reason of his disgrace in Wirtemberg was simply that he opposed the terrible licence of the Duke's mistress.

Now the Marquise de Maintenon was a little sensitive on the subject of mistresses, and when Elizabeth Charlotte invoked her aid against the machinations of a wanton, old Veuve Scarron changed her tone. Then in the midst of the discussion the King had a twinge in his gangrened knee, and signed Forstner's release, in order to be rid of this pertinacious princess.

Meanwhile there had been storms at Ludwigsburg. In December 1711 the new Emperor Charles VI., former pretender to the Spanish throne, was crowned Emperor at Frankfort. The reigning princes of the various allied German states attended the coronation of the German king, crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Eberhard Ludwig of Wirtemberg repaired to Frankfort for the historic ceremony, and it was the right of the Duchess of Wirtemberg to attend, if she so desired; but Johanna Elizabetha remained in her dreary black-hung apartments, sewing coarse linen garments for the poor, and weeping her desolation. Pageants were not for her obviously.

But the Landhofmeisterin demanded to go to Frankfort with her Duke. Zollern and Madame de Ruth advised her to refrain from so preposterous a request; but she had set her mind upon it, and she importuned Serenissimus, who, poor man, was indeed all unable to grant her this whim.

There were pleadings, tears, angry words, finally a serious quarrel between the lovers. Friedrich Graevenitz, now a Privy Councillor and Minister of State, remonstrated pompously with his sister. He had gained nearly all he desired through her, and now affected to be the serious official, the hard-working minister and grave man of the world. She bade him return to his petty businesses of administration, and warned him that, did he interfere with her, she would cause him to be dismissed. Friedrich aimed at being Premier of Wirtemberg, and thus he bowed down once more to the all-powerful lady. The Landhofmeisterin continued to pester the Duke to convey her to Frankfort. Then, in the midst of this quarrel, news came from Stetten that the Duchess-mother was sick unto death, and Serenissimus abruptly left Ludwigsburg to receive his mother's dying blessing.

He returned in a few days deeply saddened. He had arrived at his mother's deathbed too late; she had almost passed away. True, her wan face had lit with love when Eberhard Ludwig stood beside her; bending over her, he had heard her murmur once more her favourite catchword, 'My absurd boy,' then a faint whisper of 'Johanna Elizabetha,' and the Duke knew that, with her last breath, the honest old lady had called him back to duty. But he returned to weep his mother's loss upon the breast of Wilhelmine von Graevenitz. In this softened mood, his Highness went near the granting his beloved's prayer, but Zollern stepped in and spoke privately with the Landhofmeisterin.

Directly after the Duchess-mother's obsequies the Duke rode northwards to Frankfort to attend the Emperor's coronation. He journeyed with his chief officers and guards, and his proud mistress was left behind in Wirtemberg. Yet she had gained another triumph. If the Duke could not grant her request concerning the coronation, what would he give her in compensation?

'Anything in the world you ask,' he had replied. And she had demanded Stetten, the Duchess-mother's dower-house! Zollern and Madame de Ruth were overwhelmed when they heard of it. Good heavens! what would the Duchess-mother have said? But on the day when Eberhard Ludwig rode to the coronation, the Landhofmeisterin's coach thundered through the fields to Stetten.

* * * * *

When the news came from Paris that Forstner had been released from the Bastille, the Landhofmeisterin flew into a towering passion. The Geheimraethe were summoned, and the affair put before them once more. The evidence against Forstner was convincing, and any Chamber would have convicted him; but it is necessary to consider who composed this Privy Council.

Landhofmeister Count Wuerben—an invalid unfortunately, and unable to appear—was Premier and Minister of War, and in his regrettable absence his wife, her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin, presided at the sessions of the Council, and a more energetic, autocratic President could not have been found in Europe. Friedrich, Count von Graevenitz, was Minister of the Interior; Baron Schuetz, Minister for Foreign Affairs; Baron Sittmann, Minister of Finance; and two brothers Pfau, cousins of Schuetz, held office as Councillors. For appearance sake (not that the Landhofmeisterin considered that often) there were several minor councillors, men of no importance, who obeyed implicitly the autocratic, vigilant, relentless President of Council. Thus the entire government lay in the Graevenitz's capable hands. Small wonder that Forstner trembled.

The Council decreed that the recalcitrant Baron was to be summoned to attend his trial forthwith, and that a hope of rehabilitation should be held out to him if he came immediately to his country's first tribunal. The death sentence was rescinded, of course, pending this new trial.

Forstner replied to this official document that he had no intention of putting his head between the wolf's teeth, and that he intended to appeal in Vienna against the wrongful detention of his monies and properties in Wirtemberg. He reminded the honourable Council that he was by birth a Bavarian, and that, though he had resided in Wirtemberg, and owned lands in that dukedom, still the Wirtemberg tribunal had no jurisdiction over him.

Upon receipt of this answer the Privy Council solemnly recondemned Forstner to death, confiscated his Wirtemberg properties, and further decreed that if he refused to be executed in person, he should be burned in effigy in the market-place of Stuttgart by the common hangman.

Forstner's response to this was a letter to the Landhofmeisterin, wherein he suggested that he should summon a Privy Council on his estates in Alsace, composed of his valet, his gardener, his lackey, and the village fiddler. That he proposed, as President of this Council, to condemn her to death; and should she not joyfully repair for her execution, he would have her hanged in effigy, head downwards, over the pig-stye. Probably that drastic Bavarian, the Duchesse d'Orleans, inspired this letter, or else Forstner had developed a grim wit in his day of trouble.

The Duke and the Landhofmeisterin raged, and the day of the burning in effigy was fixed.

Then the officer of the Secret Service came to Ludwigsburg carrying a bundle of placards torn from the house walls in Stuttgart. Hundreds of these writings had been nailed to the walls and the doors, and seemed to resprout there like magic mushrooms, for as fast as the agent and his men removed one, another appeared in its place. These handbills set forth the gist of Forstner's letter to the Landhofmeisterin, but in even more pregnant terms, and with additional remarks concerning her person, habits, and transactions.