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 GrÄvenitz 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 MÉlac'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 PhilomÈle, 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 mediÆval 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 GrÄvenitz and SchÜtz. 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 GrÄvenitz. 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'OrlÉans, that Princess of Bavaria who had succeeded, and by her sturdy, uncompromising treatment of the Duc d'OrlÉans, 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'OrlÉans, 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'OrlÉans, 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'OrlÉans 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 ForstnÈre' 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 'ForstnÈre?' 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'OrlÉans 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 GrÄvenitz, 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 GrÄvenitz. 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 GeheimrÄthe 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 WÜrben—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 GrÄvenitz, was Minister of the Interior; Baron SchÜtz, Minister for Foreign Affairs; Baron Sittmann, Minister of Finance; and two brothers Pfau, cousins of SchÜtz, 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 GrÄvenitz'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'OrlÉans, 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.

'Death to the person found affixing such a placard. Imprisonment to those who speak of these handbills. Fines to each householder upon whose house or door such a paper is found.' Thus Eberhard Ludwig decreed; and one miserable wretch was actually hung for nailing up one of Forstner's placards; while innumerable fines were imposed upon the burghers whose houses had been thus decorated.

The burning in effigy of Baron Forstner was fixed for the 15th of February. The arrangements for this strange function were elaborate, and entirely supervised and in part designed by the Landhofmeisterin. Her aim was to make this mock execution not merely a symbol of the criminal's degradation, but a truly awe-inspiring ceremony, calculated to strike terror into the minds of the onlookers.

She caused every town and village of Wirtemberg to send their chief men accompanied by their wives (the Landhofmeisterin knew the power of womanly gossip in a country, or indeed in any community) to witness the sham holocaust. The members of the court were commanded to be present, and the Stuttgart burghers were informed that non-attendants would be fined.

The 15th of February dawned clear and frosty, and in spite of the burghers' hatred of the Landhofmeisterin and all she did, there was a certain amused anticipation in Stuttgart regarding the strange ceremony which was to take place.

For days carpenters, joiners, and builders had been at work in the market-place erecting a huge platform and a giant gibbet. The well-to-do burghers hired rooms in the houses looking on to the square. As they dared not refuse to attend, they desired at least to make this mock execution an occasion for popular entertainment.

At nine of the clock the bells of all churches in Stuttgart began to toll for the dead, and the tramp of soldiers proceeding to the market-place warned the compulsory sightseers that it was time to repair thither and they would not be crushed in the mob. Many set out in a jocular humour, but quickly this gaiety changed; there was something inexplicably sinister in the atmosphere, a menace to freedom, an appalling sense of relentless tyranny.

Round the market-place the soldiery formed a double line, and the people soon saw that this mock ceremony was a grim threat; for the soldiers carried matchlocks, and the whisper ran round the assemblage that these were primed and loaded, and that the soldiers had orders to fire if any group of sightseers indulged in undue hilarity.

The newly erected platform was draped in black, and in the middle of the market-place stood a circle of stakes round a large centre pillar. This circle contained a huge pile of tar-soaked wood.

A brooding stillness fell on the people. The market-place was densely packed, each window of the surrounding houses held its complement of men and women. The church bells still tolled the solemn death tones, otherwise the silence was unbroken.

At length a flourish of trumpets sounded. The court was approaching. First came the officers of State and the members of the nobility, then a detachment of Silver Guards rode up, and formed into line before the black-draped platform. Another fanfare of trumpets and the Landhofmeisterin's gilded coach thundered into the market-place, the mob crushing back to avoid the flying hoofs of the escort's horses. Several coaches followed, containing the red-robed privy councillors and richly bedizened courtiers. Serenissimus sprang from the Landhofmeisterin's coach and assisted her Excellency to alight. She took her place beside his Highness in the centre of the platform, and the privy council and the court gathered round.

Then appeared a file of soldiers and officers, and in their midst was a rigid figure lashed between two condemned criminals. One a murderer, particularly odious to the Stuttgart burghers, for he had stabbed his employer, a well-known lady, the much-esteemed widow of a popular town councillor. The other a notorious horse-stealer, whom the law-abiding Stuttgarters had stoned but a few months past.

The rigid figure was ridiculous enough: the great waxen head sculptured to an unmistakable, though grotesque, likeness of the well-known features of Baron Forstner; then the long, emaciated limbs and even the man's noticeably narrow, flat feet had been reproduced, and they shuffled stiffly along the frost-dried cobble stones. It was a masterpiece of ridicule, yet there was something furiously cruel in the whole absurd travesty of a human being, something terrible in this association in ignominy, between the stiff, swaying waxen thing and the condemned criminals. Slowly this strange procession passed through the crowd, and the three figures—the two living, and the gruesome, inanimate parody of life—were pushed into the circle of faggots in the centre of the market-place and bound all three to the tall middle pillar. Then the common hangman, a huge, heavy-featured Swabian—a butcher by usual occupation—stepped forward and demanded in the accustomed formula: 'If by the will of God and His representatives of law and order on earth, these miserable men were to be sent to their eternal punishment?' The chief officer of law made answer that such was the 'will of Heaven and of the very noble Prince, our Lord Eberhard Ludwig, Duke and Ruler of Wirtemberg.' Then a member of the privy council rose, and in solemn tones read the indictment of Friedrich Haberle, the murderer, and Johannes Schwan, the horse-stealer, condemned to be burned at the stake, together with the effigy of the detestable traitor and purloiner of State monies, Christoph Peter Forstner.

In spite of the threatened penalty, a murmur ran through the onlookers. They had expected to see a lifeless thing burned, but could they indeed be forced to witness the burning of two living men? The execution of a witch was another thing—they enjoyed that; but in cold blood to watch two human beings, not horrible magicians but merely sinners—to see these creatures burned along with that ghastly, lifeless, waxen thing,—that was awesome! A woman in one of the windows screamed, a child in the crowd below lifted a wailing cry. Perhaps the whole thing was inconsistent! What difference between the holocaust of a witch and that of two vile criminals? What matter to the dying men that an absurd image should be burned with them? yet there lay some indescribable horror in it. The hangman advanced and applied a flaming torch to the tar-smeared faggots, which began to hiss and splutter in the still, frosty, winter air.

'Hold!' cried the privy councillor, 'unbind those men! Friedrich Haberle and Johannes Schwan are reprieved from death, their sentence is commuted to flogging and banishment. Beside Christoph Peter Forstner's crimes these men have hardly transgressed. It is the will of his Highness that they should go free, in token of his wise mercy and to let you see how sure is his justice! And against so lenient a Prince has this odious traitor Forstner conspired! Hangman, do your work upon his image in symbol of his well-deserved punishment, from which the unjust protection of a foreign monarch shields the actual person of this criminal. But let this symbol of death be ever present in the souls of all beholders. Such will be the bodily fate of all those who conspire against his Highness or his Highness's government.'

The flames sprang upwards, licking round the waxen figure and scorching the arm of one of the criminals who was being released from the cords that bound him.

Every eye was upon the beauty of the woman seated beside the Duke Eberhard Ludwig. In abject submission and deadly hatred they gazed on the face of her who thus threatened them, for they read her threat against themselves in every word of the privy councillor's discourse, her menace in each flame which consumed the waxen figure of her enemy, Baron Forstner.