Onthe 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 indrawer 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 thosethey 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.
'Youare 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 hershort 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 hasbeen 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'striumph 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 revengedpoor 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 Louisxiv.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 Charlesvi., 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 ladyhad 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, relentlessPresident 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 thegist 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 thitherandthey would not becrushed 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 waxenhead 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.
Forstner'sfate worked marvels in the outward behaviour of the Wirtembergers. The strange scene upon the market-place lingered in their minds, and the actual loss which Forstner sustained in confiscated properties, monies, and titles, made the sober burghers careful even in the private expression of their hatred of the Landhofmeisterin. They still spoke of her as the Landverderberin (Land-despoiler), but they greeted her with reverential demeanour when she thundered through town or village in her coach.
Of her witchcraft there was no longer any doubt, in all opinions. Forstner had suffered from a grievous disease, they had heard, since the witch-woman had practised her horrid magic upon his effigy. True, Prelate Osiander had spoken openly of the natural and inevitable effects of such cruel misfortunes upon a man, already weakly in health, but they argued that the churchman was obliged to take this view, and his Reverence's opinions were rejected.
Yet the fierce hatred only smouldered under this calm and respectful demeanour, and the Landhofmeisterin knew this right well, for his Highness's Secret Service reported many things. The vigilance was unceasing; through the whole country the spies wandered, and many were the fines they levied for careless words which they called treason. 'Treason to whom, great God!' wailed the wretched people. 'Treason to his Highness's honour,' they were told, and knew her Excellency, his Highness's mistress, was meant under this respectable appellation.
There was no denying it: Wirtemberg belonged to the Grävenitzin. Eberhard Ludwig was a mere shadow at herside, but a loyal shadow which approved, or affected to approve, her every action.
The doings at Ludwigsburg were always brilliant, often gay: masques, banquets, music, play-acting, dancing; and even foreign travellers repaired to the South German court to view the brilliancies which equalled those of Versailles before the pious, wanton Maintenon had turned the palace into a house of prayer-meeting, strangely enough almost Calvinistic in its gloom.
At Ludwigsburg the months flew by in a whirl of gaiety and elegant revelry. The groans of an oppressed peasantry, the curses of an overtaxed burgherdom, could not pierce through the chorus of merriment. Smaller stars waxed and waned, favourites of a day disappeared, but the Landhofmeisterin's power grew greater, and her ambition became each day more tremendous. She was treated with royal honours, and the court customs were so arranged that her kin should take precedency of all.
The news of Count Würben's death caused fresh alarms at Stuttgart, for it was expected that the Countess would again endeavour to remove Johanna Elizabetha and marry the Duke. But she had learned her lesson, and now contented herself with her towering position as ruler and mistress. To such a personage the minor detail of legal marriage seemed unimportant, though Madame de Maintenon's example rankled in the mind of every royal favourite.
The Landhofmeisterin believed her position to be unassailable, and if a thought crossed her mind that all this power and pleasure depended upon the will of a man and a Prince, that will which is so often better spelled caprice, still she could not doubt that this one man, one Prince, was constant and stable. From the force of love, of trust, of habit, and of fear he would remain hers till death. And after his Highness's death? For that she was prepared also. 'Gold is power,' she had said to Monsieur Gabriel long ago at Güstrow, and she did not forget this precept. She spent freely and magnificently, but she amassed an enormous fund in reserve. No year passed without some beautiful property becoming hers—broad acres of field andforest, entire villages, old and lordly castles. To name but a few of these: Gochsheim, Welzheim, Brenz, Stetten (the Duchess-mother's dower-house), Freudenthal, the Castle of Urach, and the Château Joyeux La Favorite. Her treasury was well filled, for she levied taxes in the Duke's name, and they flowed into her privy purse: gold heavy with the curses of a people. Her dream of an empire where she should hold secret dominion over the wealth and enterprise of a vast Jewish community had been realised in a modified fashion. She had caused the stringent laws against the Jews to be relaxed; they were permitted to worship openly; a synagogue was erected in Stuttgart, and Jews could acquire civil rights. At her village of Freudenthal she had founded a Jewish settlement. Old Frau Hazzim died there in peace, blessing the name of the friend of Israel. The Jews, in return, served the Grävenitz well, and she had great sums safely awaiting her out of Wirtemberg. All this in preparation for the death of the man she loved! Yet, after all, the most loving and perfect wives make these arrangements if they can: the dower-house filled with linen and silver, and the jointure; but it will ever be regarded as a heinous offence for the mistress to provide for herself. These condemnations of ours are a part of the spontaneous human judgment, and it would not be entirely human were it not gloriously inconsistent.
Freudenthal was the place she loved best of all her possessions, and here she gathered together the most beautiful objects: pictures, Italian inlaid cabinets, graceful French furniture, wonderful silken hangings, carved ivories, many rare books. The gardens were laid out by her own design. Freudenthal lies sequestered from the world at the edge of a little valley, and close behind the village rise long, low, wooded hills—the Stromberg, dark with fir-trees, whose sombre tone is relieved by groves of beeches. Below Freudenthal verdant fields sweep away in soft undulations, broken here and there by beautiful orchards. The Grävenitz knew that an elaborate garden would be a false note in this rustic serenity, and her Freudenthal garden was designed in a simple style. She had found there a peasant's orchard,with many ancient fruit-trees; these she left untouched, merely sowing fine grass instead of the corn which waves beneath the apple- and pear-trees in every Wirtemberg orchard. The actual garden she planted with bowers of roses and beautiful flowering borders along broad grass pathways. The only artificial embellishments were two flights of stone steps leading to simple fountains with large stone basins, where the water gurgled and splashed lazily. 'Frisoni, build the house not in the new style, I pray you,' she had said, 'some graceful Italian simplicity were better here'; and he built a very pleasant mansion, unturreted, without tortured elegancies—a long, low, broad-windowed country retreat, each proportion perfect, each line harmonious. What a wealth of flowers bloomed in the Freudenthal garden! How fragrant were the roses, the lilacs, the jasmine!
Here the Landhofmeisterin was wont to linger if his Highness were forced to leave her for a few days. Here she would live a short span of peaceful hours, ambition banished awhile, affairs of State forgotten. Here she would sing again the songs she loved so well.
'Let us go to Freudenthal, et chantons les romances d'autrefois,' she would say to Madame de Ruth and Zollern. Then his Highness would come riding down the long, straight, narrow road from Ludwigsburg. He would dismount at the orchard gate and call to her: 'Wilhelmine! Philomèle!' and for an hour the glamour of youth and an echo of the early days of a great passion would return to them. Sometimes he would pray her to sing again the melody which she had sung in the Rothenwald when they had first loved; but alas! her voice was not the same. The beautiful notes were there, the consummate art, but the world-hardness had laid its touch upon her very music. True, Wilhelmine singing was always a being much more tender, more pure than Wilhelmine woman of the world, still her voice registered the hardening of her soul. Zollern said that when she sang 'she expressed all she was not,' and it was a cruel truth. Sometimes there rang for an instant an infinite yearning, but it vanished, and the cold, perfect, artificially passionate utterance resumed sway.
Now and then Eberhard Ludwig still wandered in the forest. He would leave the company of hunters, and followed by faithful old Mélac, the wolf-hound, he escaped to revel in the silence and beauty of the beechwood. Often he was terribly sad in those days. Wilhelmine perplexed him; it was the hardness in her heart which made him suffer. He winced when he heard even her glorious voice fraught with this new soul of harshness. Often he endeavoured to tell her of his sadness, but she laughed at him.
What more could he crave from her, indeed? She loved him, she was true to him. Alas! he could not explain that it was the essence of her love which had changed. She had no time to be sad, no time therefore to be tender. Poor Eberhard Ludwig! poor brilliant, successful Wilhelmine! And yet, who could blame her if she was greatly occupied? She was chief ministerde factoof a country; she was finance minister of a queen, she was herself queen; she was Master of the Ceremonies to a court; she was purveyor of amusements to a great prince; yet she had lost the faculty to understand that this prince agonised because she was too occupied to give him tenderness. Passion she gave him, and brilliant gaiety; she tyrannised, flattered, charmed, cajoled him, what more could he desire? Only, he dreamed of the impossible; he dreamed of the love and friendship which remain, of the roses and kisses which do not fade and lose their savour. Of course, it was impossible; but from a dream's non-fulfilment a tragedy was preparing. The tragedy of satiety and inevitable disappointment.
All Wirtemberg was in the Landhofmeisterin's grasp, but two things disturbed her entire enjoyment of power: the continued residence of Johanna Elizabetha in Stuttgart, and the unrelenting disapproval of the Evangelical Church towards the unholy court of Ludwigsburg.
The Catholic Church, through Zollern, coquetted with the Landhofmeisterin in the hope of winning Wirtemberg's allegiance by her influence. But the Protestant community, headed by Prelate Osiander, was openly hostile. The Landhofmeisterin, piqued by this, made overtures offeringto endow orphanages, schools, and to repair churches; but though the Church, after the manner of Churches, swallowed the gold greedily, still it refused to swallow the Landhofmeisterin so long as she remained in deadly and open sin.
To oust the Duchess was impossible; therefore it was deemed sufficient that she should be deserted and apparently forgotten, and surely in time the Church would permit itself to be mollified, and if cajolery failed, the Grävenitz dreamed of using the well-worn threat of Roman conversion. Meanwhile she was ruler of the land, and she thought it preposterous that in the State Church services her great name went unmentioned in the prayers to God for the salvation of Wirtemberg's ruler. The Duke was induced to intimate to Osiander his wish that the Landhofmeisterin should be prayed for when they interceded for himself. Osiander treated this request with contempt, and returned no answer. Then the matter rested for two years, and it seemed as though both the Duke and his mistress had forgotten it.
One day Osiander was summoned to Ludwigsburg. He could not refuse to obey the ruler of his country, and though he suspected the summons to be in truth from the Landhofmeisterin, it was signed and sealed by Eberhard Ludwig. So the Prelate rode to Ludwigsburg.
It was as he had feared, and he was conducted to her Excellency's reception room in the Corps de Logis. Bowing deeply, the page ushered the Prelate into the large apartment and retired, and Osiander found himself alone in the presence of the great Landhofmeisterin.
She came forward graciously and greeted the churchman with a profoundly reverential courtesy. He returned her salutation coldly and turned away his eyes, for her beauty was dazzling still, and he feared he might be influenced.
'I think, your Excellency,' he said quietly, 'I think his Highness the Duke wished to speak with me?'
'Monseigneur Osiander, I have ventured to request your presence concerning a matter which has been long in my thoughts,' she said in her most sonorous tones, and with that smile upon her lips which few could resist; but Osiander observed her coldly and gravely.
'I pray you be seated,' she continued, and pointed to a large red-cushioned chair, one which Zollern had brought from Rome, the typical dignified, high-backed chair of the Roman Cardinal. To Osiander its very shape was Papistical.
She flung herself down upon a gilt tabouret which stood near. It was much lower than the Prelate's seat, and he could not fail to look down into the deep décolletage of her bodice. He moved away a little, while a faint flush rose to his cheeks.
'I am listening, Excellency,' he said; 'but you will pardon me if I urge you to be brief, for I have much business to transact this afternoon.'
'Ah! Prelate, it is so difficult to be brief with those who do not comprehend!' She leaned towards him. 'I have ever—respected you, Monseigneur.'
The Prelate drew back from her. In his mind he repeated over and over again, as though the phrase were an incantation against some evil spirit: 'The Jezebel flatters me, the Jezebel flatters me,' but man, he could not remain insensible to the woman who thus appealed to him, though priest, he abhorred her. All her charm was in her eyes, her smile; there was a fragrance about her—an exhilaration.
'Madame, it were better if you respected God's laws,' he said sternly. His severity seemed to him as a barrier which he raised between his human weakness and her evil fascination. She sprang up; actress that she was, she meant to convince this man by a grand and tragical scene. She knew him to be too simple, too unsubtle, to detect the art which lent power and pathos to her words. Besides, she was well in her rôle, it amused her.
'Ah! you priest of God! I appeal to you, not concerning the necessarily unjust laws of men, but concerning the law of God and Nature. See, it is no law of God's that I have transgressed. Remember, I am truly the wife of Serenissimus, blessed by prayer. My second marriage is nothing—merely a political arrangement. And my sin, what is it? I found a good man dragging out the days of his youth in sadness beside a woman who could not understand him—a woman only his wife in name. I gave my life to him, I am true to him.The law of man refuses me justice, but God does not, cannot; and I appeal to you, as God's representative on earth, to give me my spiritual right: to include me in your prayers.' She sank back upon the tabouret. The Prelate was astounded. The question of the Landhofmeisterin's being mentioned in the public prayers for the head of the State came back to him, but it was incredible, preposterous. No; this woman surely sought the grace of God. She was earnest, repentance had come to her. She desired his prayers. Thus well had Wilhelmine gauged the Prelate's character, his incapacity for detecting the play-actress in the passionate, imploring woman.
The pastor of souls was softened immediately by the vision of rescuing this strayed spirit.
'My daughter,' he said solemnly, 'if you indeed desire my prayers, I will intercede daily for you. I shall pray that your heart shall be steadfast, pray for God's pardon for your evil life. But I ask you to combat temptation with all your strength. May Christ in His mercy help you.'
The emotion of his great earnestness rendered the good man's voice tremulous.
'I thank you, you are generous to me.' She reached him her hand, and he held it gently between both of his. 'But, Prelate,' she continued, 'is it not written in the Bible that when two or three are gathered together God will grant their requests? I would fain have prayer offered for me in church.'
The Prelate started; yet the demand seemed too outrageous. He could not credit that this sinner wished for a nation's prayers as though she were, in truth, the Duke's legal wife. No, no; she was a repentant sinner seeking the grace of God. Far be it from him, a sinner, to refuse his help.
'You mean, your Excellency, that you wish me to pray silently for you when the faithful are gathered together?' he said tentatively.
'No, I do not mean that,' she answered quickly; 'I wish a prayer to be said aloud for my salvation.'
The Prelate was overwhelmed.
'Surely you do not wish to make public confession of repentance before the congregation?' he questioned. The woman seemed mad to desire thus to proclaim her shame,and yet he was filled with reverence for the faith which could prompt so proud a being to humble herself in the eyes of all men.
'Monseigneur le Prélat Osiander,' she said after a pause, 'I am the Duke's wife before God, and it is my husband his Highness's command and mine, that my name should be included in the official prayer for the head of this Dukedom. I am ruler I would have you know.'
The preposterous demand was made, Osiander could no longer doubt. It was no repentant sinner with whom he dealt, but the all-powerful mistress who had but stooped for a moment to cajole him in the hope of gaining her aim, and who, finding him uncompromising, had resumed her imperious habit. The Prelate was aghast, indignant. He rose stiffly from his chair.
'Your Excellency cannot have considered this command, or even you, Madame, would not have dared to make it. The only prayer that can be said for you in church is that of intercession for the sinful.'
The Landhofmeisterin approached closely.
'Will you accede to my request? If not, you shall obey my order or it will be the worse for you.' She was beside herself with anger. She hated the word Sin; she always said it represented the bourgeois' criticism of the life of gentlemen.
'No, Excellency, I will not obey you. With my consent the pure service of the worship of God shall never be sullied with your name.' Osiander was the sterner, the more relentless, because of his momentary weakness and credulity.
'You are obliged to pray for me,' she retorted mockingly; 'each time you petition Heaven for the health and happiness of the Duke, you pray for me! For me, do you hear? I am his health and his happiness.'
To Osiander this was rank blasphemy, and, good man though he was, he lost his temper.
'Indeed, Excellency, you say rightly. You are truly included in the prayers of the congregation, for each time we say "Lord, deliver us from evil," we pray for the end of your infamous reign.'
The Grävenitz laughed harshly. All traces of her softermood, of her fascination, had gone past; she had become once more the cold, proud woman, the tyrant whose statue-like beauty seemed to the Wirtembergers to be some devil's mask of false outward fairness, covering a mass of inner corruption.
'Is this the only answer you have, Osiander?' she asked roughly.
'Yes, your Excellency, and if it were to be my last word on earth.'
The Grävenitz looked at him fixedly for a moment; after all, she rather admired his intrepidity.
'Your audience is at an end,' she said haughtily, and bowed slightly as though she were really some rightful sovereign dismissing a froward courtier.
The Prelate returned her salute equally slightly, and turning away with a sigh, he left her presence.
In later years the estimable man was wont to aver he had never been so near to insulting a woman, yet he would add:
'But she was great in her very wickedness! Surely she must have been one of the angels fallen from Heaven and apprenticed in Hell! for of a truth she was in evil as compared with ordinary sinners, what in holiness is a saint compared with ordinary good people. A wonderful woman, alas!'
Ah, Osiander, did she leave some clinging fragrance, some spark of her subtle charm, to tingle for ever through your pure, simple soul?
In 1716 the Erbprinz Friedrich Ludwig had espoused Henriette Marie of Brandenburg-Schwedt, a pretty and most correct Princess who possessed, among other graceful talents, a perfect genius for tasteful dressing. The marriage festivities had not taken place at Stuttgart, in order to avoid the obvious complications of the meeting of the bridegroom's parents. The Erbprinz hardly knew his father, for Eberhard Ludwig had permitted him to remain chiefly with the Duchess in Stuttgart. At least the unfortunate Johanna Elizabetha was granted the happiness of watching over her gentle, sickly son. The boy had led a dull life enough in deserted Stuttgart, and his natural aptitude for music and study had thus found free scope. Immediately after his marriage, however, he wascommanded to reside at Ludwigsburg, where a fine suite of apartments was prepared for him and his bride.
Friedrich Ludwig protested that he desired to remain in Stuttgart, but the Landhofmeisterin willed it otherwise, and Serenissimus enforced her will.
Henriette Marie played her part in this difficult position with dignity and well-bred tact. She was perfectly correct in her demeanour towards the Landhofmeisterin, yet she kept her at a distance and gently rebutted the mistress's friendly advances, and refused to notice her subsequent sneers. Twice during each week the Erbprincessin drove to Stuttgart to visit her unhappy mother-in-law, and she was careful to inform Serenissimus of every intended visit. 'Have I your Highness's permission to journey to Stuttgart?' and 'I thank your Highness, I shall start this afternoon.'
The Landhofmeisterin raged, but she was powerless against the Erbprincessin's quiet dignity and amiable, obstinate coldness. Then, too, Henriette Marie's wardrobe was a source of much annoyance to Wilhelmine; she feared the younger woman had finer gowns than she. In fine, it was the tragi-comedy of that painful jealousy of the woman approaching forty years for the youth of twenty summers.
The Erbprinz, however, could not resist the Landhofmeisterin's charm. She sang him to a very frenzy of delight; she assumed a tender, motherly anxiety over his delicate health—an anxiety which she made charmingly friendly; while she avoided the tiresome questions, the constant open observation, the galling reminders of his weakness in the presence of others, all that which poor, really tender, desperately anxious Johanna Elizabetha had done, wearying her son, shaming him with his physical delicacy.
The Erbprincessin bore a son in August 1718—a weakly child, the picture of his feeble father. The little life's flame flickered and shuddered through one bitter Wirtemberg winter, and in February 1719 passed away into the best sleep the baby had ever known.
Here again the Landhofmeisterin triumphed over Johanna Elizabetha. She knew how to console the Erbprinz with words of hope, how to turn his thoughts away from the emptygilded cradle where had lain that frail little being whom poor Friedrich Ludwig had loved with all his gentle heart. Alas! Johanna Elizabetha was too sad herself to be able to cheer sorrow, and she invariably met her stricken son with floods of tears, doleful questionings, torrents of lamentations, and he went back to Ludwigsburg—and the Landhofmeisterin—for consolation.
Thus things were fairly smooth at Ludwigsburg, and to Johanna Elizabetha it seemed like some wonderful, illicit heaven where her husband revelled and whence she was shut out. She sometimes dreamed of breaking into this Elysium, of expelling the regnant devil and rescuing Eberhard Ludwig. 'Perhaps, if your Highness spoke with Serenissimus things might change,' counselled Madame de Stafforth, and the Duchess prayed for strength to conquer the fortress of vice, Ludwigsburg. For years she hesitated. Indeed, she felt it would be almost immodest to enter the Sinner's Palace, but the day came when she decided to risk herself in the endeavour to turn his Highness's heart back to purity—purity and herself. She dressed herself in her sombre best and ordered her coach. Madame de Stafforth volunteered for service, but the Duchess said she would go alone. She was very brave and terribly afraid.
Through the waving, yellow corn-fields, bordered by fruit-trees for the most part, or else lying like a narrow white riband in the midst of the broad rich valley, the road wound from Stuttgart to the Erlachhof forest and the palace of Ludwigsburg. It was early August when the Duchess journeyed thither, and the corn stood high and golden in the hazy warmth of the sunshine. Far away to the right the hills rose blue and veiled, and to the left the grim fortress of Hohenasperg dominated the smiling, fruitful plain with frowning menace. Johanna Elizabetha's eyes sought the distant mound where she knew lay the prison fort; perchance Serenissimus would answer her pleadings by imprisonment in that dark fastness.
Her coach lumbered slowly on. The Duchess's horses were old and little used to work, and the journey seemed endless. At length the avenue leading to the residencegates was reached, and in the cool shade of the chestnut-trees the Duchess's courage returned. After all, it was her right to enter any Wirtemberg palace, she told herself; yet a chill foreboding gripped her. Should she turn back?
The coach came to a jolting halt, and she heard her outrider explaining to the sentry at the gate that she was the Duchess journeying to the palace. The man seemed doubtful, but after several minutes' parley the little cortège of two outriders, an old shabby coach, two troopers of a Wirtemberg regiment for escort (no Silver Guard here!), and a heart-broken woman, was allowed to proceed.
The palace of Ludwigsburg lay in the August afternoon haze. Her Highness's eyes wandered over the vast pile: the long, low orangery to the south; the numerous rounded roofs of the palace which seemed like the amassment of a group of giant red-brown tortoises; the thousand large windows glinting in the sunshine, the stately gardens. The Duchess sighed deeply as her coach rolled down the broad street which led to the palace gates. She saw the fine houses which bordered this street on one side only, like so many courtiers turning their smiling faces towards the gardens, the palace, and—the Landhofmeisterin.
All this, then, Eberhard Ludwig had raised to honour the whim of a courtesan, of an unknown adventuress from Mecklemburg, while she, the Duchess, legal wife, princess of a noble house—she was shut out, banished to a grim haunted castle in a deserted town! She wrung her hands together. She was helpless, hopeless.
Several courtiers, lingering in the street, stared curiously at the shabby coach. One of the French dressmakers, hurrying from the palace, stood stock still in surprise at seeing so inelegant an equipage in the street of magnificent 'Louisbourg.' The Duchess, with the morbid sensitiveness of a deeply wounded, slighted woman, winced under the scornful inspection of the pert little dressmaker.
Now the coach entered the first gate of the palace, and once more the outrider was obliged to proclaim and assure the identity of the carriage's occupant. This time the sentry flatly refused to believe him, and it was necessary to call theCaptain of the Guard. Here the Duchess's spirit asserted itself. She summoned the Captain to the door of the coach and haughtily bid him admit her immediately. But the Captain, a youth appointed by the Grävenitz, feared her Excellency's displeasure more than God or man, and though he was gentleman enough to treat the Duchess courteously, he begged her to wait while he repaired to the Landhofmeisterin for instructions. No one was admitted to the palace without permission from her Excellency, he said.
The Duchess inquired if Madame de Ruth was in the castle. At least, she hoped that for the sake of old memories the grande Maîtresse du Palais, 'Dame de Déshonneur,' as she had once named her, would have sufficient humanity to help her now. Madame de Ruth was in the castle, the Captain replied, but she was very old and infirm, and he feared to disturb her afternoon rest. Very old and infirm? The Duchess sighed. Ah! many years had passed since she had seen the garrulous lady. Alas! she was no longer young herself. God in heaven! why did that sinful, triumphant wanton alone retain her beauty? She had been told that the Landhofmeisterin, like some evil giant tree, seemed to grow more beautiful, more resplendent each year. It was not true; for Time had set his cruel fingermarks upon Wilhelmine, but her wonderful health and her complaisant knowledge of success gave her a seeming youth. True, the pert little French dressmaker could have told the Duchess of violent scenes over gowns made to the measurements of former years, which could not fit her Excellency; but the courtesan pays a homage to Venus, offering up the tribute of powder, paint, and gorgeous clothes, and Venus responds by a gift of seeming youth; while the virtuous woman is punished for her virtue and her neglect of the Goddess of Appearance, by a shorter span of beauty and youth. Yet there is an unerring justice in the world. When Time has worked his inexorable will, and powder, paint, and crafty clothing can no longer hide his ravages, then the virtuous woman triumphs, probably for the first time in her life. They are both old, she and the courtesan, but she is sometimes beautiful—old, grey, and sere, but venerable, charming—and little children love her, andyounger women bring their troubles—ay, and their joys, reverently to her, feeling a benediction in the touch of the pure, withered hand. While the courtesan—alas! a ridiculous garish absurdity, a grim ghost of past merriment, a horrid relic of forgotten debauches, a painted harridan at whom the boys jeer when she passes down the street. Here is one of God's great judgments and one of Nature's object-lessons.