A German Pompadour Part 20

'But explain the circ.u.mstance of your servant being discovered, poignard in hand, lurking in the Princess Johanna Elizabetha's rooms. And oh!

Wilhelmine, forgive me; but this preposterous Glaser story, as you call it, has never been properly explained. You have laughed, and I have put the matter out of my thoughts; but now--O beloved! it is so terrible to doubt you, but----'

Wilhelmine was unprepared for this retrospective attack. She hesitated, and his Highness's face grew dark.

'I really must ask you to explain,' he said harshly, moving away from her.

'Eberhard,' she said brokenly, 'I sent the powder to the d.u.c.h.ess.'

Serenissimus started forward. 'You confess? O my G.o.d!' he cried.

'Yes; I will tell you. The powder was a harmless philtre. I brewed a magic draught which causes whoever drinks it to forget the being they love, and become enamoured of the first person they see. O Eberhard, believe me!'

'Fairy tales!' he almost laughed. 'But why given in secret? why given at all?' he demanded.

'If she forgot you, forgot your charm, beloved, she would be happy again.

I had pity on her!'

It was poison she had sent, and even to herself her story seemed too extravagant for credence. To her surprise, however, his Highness believed her in this.

'Well, and for the rest? for Ferrari's being hidden in the castle?' he questioned.

'Call Maria and ask her if I was aware that the madman had left Urach.

She can vouch that I thought him to be here.'

'Why did he do this thing?' said the Duke.

'What explanation did he offer?' she queried hurriedly.

'That he wished to see the black rooms!' he replied.

'Well, but surely that is explanation enough? You know the man's extraordinary love of beauty, his curious seeking for unusual furniture.

He is mad, Eberhard; I tell you he is mad! We must save him from prison and send him back to Italy.' She spoke so naturally, so easily, that his Highness felt that sense of the unaccustomed, the unknown evil, the grim suspicion of crime fall away, and an immense relief take its place.

'Of course, of course!' he said hurriedly; 'I was frightened by that fool Forstner. Forgive me for my insane suspicion.' And he hastened away to a.s.sure Forstner of the sheer absurdity of this accusation.

Perhaps he would have been a trifle shaken in his confidence had he seen Wilhelmine fall back in her chair, breathing hard like some wild animal who had escaped the hunter's knife by a hair's-breadth.

If Serenissimus was thus easily appeased, the authorities and citizens of Stuttgart were not to be put off with a mere tale. Also Johanna Elizabetha's friends and partisans were loud in their accusations of the Gravenitz. Ferrari had been released from prison by the Duke's command.

The man was mad, his Highness averred, and it was but merciful to send him back to Italy. It leaked out that the Italian had left Wirtemberg, but it was whispered that he carried a large sum of gold with him.

'Blood money,' said the Stuttgarters, and their indignation grew apace.

Schutz wrote from Vienna that things were going badly for the Gravenitz.

The Emperor had been informed of the Ferrari affair, and was reported to have expressed his opinion in no measured terms. In fact, Schutz strongly advised the Countess of Urach to leave Wirtemberg for a time, but the lady remained firm. 'Go, I will not, until I am obliged, and that is not yet,' she declared.

So the days pa.s.sed as usual at Urach, outwardly. The Duke shot roebuck daily in the early morning, the Countess often accompanying him. Later, Serenissimus would ride young and fiery horses; but in this the Countess did not take part, she was but a poor horsewoman. Then came a delicious banquet, with the Countess of Urach's musicians in attendance discoursing fair melodies.

During the afternoon his Highness drove eight, ten, and sometimes twelve horses together, thundering through the country, and the peasants soon learnt to a.s.sociate their heretofore beloved ruler with clouds of dust and ruthless speed. A demon driver rushing past, who, they said, would crush them were they not quick to fly to safety in their houses or fields.

A demon driver with a beautiful, haughty-faced woman beside him. Verily an appalling picture to the sleepy Swabian peasant accustomed to the heavy swaying motion of quiet oxen or laborious cart-horses.

Each evening at the castle of Urach there were merry doings: dancing, cards, and music. It all seemed gay and secure enough, but there was unrest beneath this outward peace, an anxious feeling in the revellers'

hearts. Madame de Ruth chattered wittily; Zollern, gallant and wise, made subtle ironic speeches; Wilhelmine sang, Serenissimus adored, the Sittmanns and the parasites were chorus to this--a chorus a little out of tune at times, perchance, but pa.s.sable.

At length the imperial ultimatum arrived, and, like a card house blown by a strong man's breath, the sham court fell, and the Queen of Hearts knew that the game was played out.

'Wilhelmine, Countess Gravenitz, masquerading under the t.i.tle of Countess of Urach, is hereby declared an exile from all countries under our suzerainty, nor can she hold property in these aforementioned countries, nor call for the law's protection. From the date of this writing she is given six days wherein to leave Wirtemberg. After the expiration of this term she must, an she remaineth in the land, stand her trial for bigamy, treason, and implication in attempted murder.'--Signed and sealed by the Emperor this.

There was no possible gainsaying; already the time allotted to her for flight was exceeded, and at any moment she might be arrested by the imperial order.

She fled to Schaffhausen once more, and in Stuttgart there was great rejoicing; but the joy was dashed to the ground when the news came that Serenissimus had also disappeared. Had he fled with his evil mistress, then? It was positively averred, however, that she had gone alone with Madame de Ruth. Witchcraft, of course! The Gravenitzin had bewitched herself once before when she had disappeared for three days from the old castle. His Highness himself had said openly that she had returned to him in a flash of lightning. What more likely than that she should have spirited Serenissimus away with her to Switzerland?

'Nonsense,' said the d.u.c.h.ess-mother at Stetten; 'Eberhard is roaming in the woods, crying to the trees that he is a broken-hearted martyr!' And she hurried to Urach, taking up her abode in the very apartments which Wilhelmine had just vacated. It is on record that her maternal Highness caused the rooms to be swept and garnished, ere she entered, as though they were infected with the pest. 'So they are,' quoth this plain-speaking dame, 'with the pest of vice!'

It is to be supposed that the d.u.c.h.ess-mother was right in her surmise regarding her son's forest wanderings, for a messenger arrived from Urach saying Serenissimus would re-enter Stuttgart with his mother in a few days' time; which he did, and was solemnly and publicly reconciled to the d.u.c.h.ess Johanna Elizabetha. The grateful burghers voted their Duke a free present of forty thousand gulden on his return, and to his d.u.c.h.ess ten thousand gulden.

The d.u.c.h.ess-mother is reported to have remarked that, of a truth, it had been fitting had they paid her back a portion of the war indemnity. 'But it does not matter,' she said, 'so long as that absurd boy, my son Eberhard, remains at his duties in future.' Dear, proud, sensible old lady! G.o.d rest her well! To her mother's heart, the thirty-seven-year-old Duke of Wirtemberg, hero, traveller, incidentally bigamist, remained eternally 'that absurd boy, my son.'

It was with mingled feelings that Wilhelmine at Schaffhausen heard of Eberhard Ludwig's reconciliation with his wife. Anger and scorn of the man's weakness predominated, but despair and humiliation tortured her as well, and a profound discouragement, which the sound of the rushing, foaming Rhine falls had no power to sooth this time. The enforced inaction was terrible to her. It was her strategy to leave his Highness's pa.s.sionate letters of excuse and explanation unanswered, and thus she had little wherewith to fill the long summer days. Madame de Ruth was a delightful companion, but Wilhelmine was unresponsive and seemed absorbed in some intricate calculation. She would sit for hours, brooding sombrely. Her eyes, narrowed and serpent-like, gazed at the rushing waters, but when Madame de Ruth remarked on the beauty of the scene she would answer irritably that she was occupied, and only begged for quiet in which to think. Towards the middle of August Schutz arrived from Vienna. He brought with him a doc.u.ment which he prayed Wilhelmine to consider, and to sign if she approved. It was ent.i.tled 'Revers de Wilhelmine, Comtesse Gravenitz,' and set forth that she undertook to relinquish all claims upon the Duke of Wirtemberg and his heirs forever.

That she recognised any child, born of her relationship to his Highness, to be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and that she undertook never to return to the court of Wirtemberg. If she bound herself to these conditions, the Emperor, in return, promised to cancel her exile from his fiefs with the sole exception of Wirtemberg. The right to hold property would be given back to her, and she would be released from suspicion of murderous intent. His Majesty even promised her twenty thousand gulden as compensation for any wrong done to her in Wirtemberg.

Wilhelmine hesitated, pondered, and finally despatched Schutz to Stuttgart with a copy of the imperial doc.u.ment. He laid it before the Privy Council, and stated that his client, the Countess Gravenitz, was prepared to accept these proposals, on the condition that Wirtemberg paid her a further sum in compensation for her loss of honour, property, and prospects.

The Privy Council fell into the trap. Anything to be finally rid of the dangerous woman, done with the whole noisome story. They had the example of Mompelgard before them, and they feared for Wirtemberg to be involved in a similar tangle.

Now Mompelgard, or Montbeliard, as the French-speaking court named it, was a small princ.i.p.ality ruled by Eberhard Ludwig's cousin, Duke Leopold Eberhard of Wirtemberg, a liegeman of Louis XIV. of France, and a man of strange notions. He had been reared in the religion of Mahomet, and with the faith he held the customs of Islam. Thus he had married three women at once, legally, as he averred; and in any case, the three wives lived in splendour at Mompelgard's castle. These ladies had had issue, and the succession to the Mompelgard honours was complicated.

Naturally Stuttgart's Geheimrathe, with this cousinly example in their minds, longed for the Gravenitz to renounce all future claims upon the Dukedom of Wirtemberg, both for herself and for any issue of her 'marriage' with Eberhard Ludwig.

Thus when Schutz conveyed her demand for money as a condition to her renouncement, they listened to the preposterous request, and declared themselves ready to pay the favourite compensation. Schutz returned to Schaffhausen with this news, and was immediately re-despatched to Stuttgart with a demand for two hundred thousand gulden as the price of her renouncement.

The Geheimrathe were aghast. Twenty thousand, nay, even forty thousand, gulden they would pay, but two hundred thousand! This vast sum to be wrung out of the war-impoverished land! Impossible! Besides, it was as much as the marriage-portion of six princesses of Wirtemberg.

The Duke was approached. He retorted that the Countess of Gravenitz was perfectly justified in any demand she chose to make. The d.u.c.h.ess-mother arrived, and spoke, as usual, plainly to her son; but he had not forgotten how his mother had dragged him, like a repentant school-child, from Urach to be reconciled to Johanna Elizabetha. He owed the d.u.c.h.ess-mother a grudge, and paid it by remaining firm concerning the justice of Wilhelmine's claim.

The Privy Council offered her twenty thousand gulden. Then forty thousand. Both sums were refused. 'Two hundred thousand or nothing,' she answered. So the negotiations were broken off.

Meanwhile, had the Geheimrathe but known it, the 'Revers' had long been signed, sealed, and despatched to Vienna.

Wilhelmine again sent Schutz to Stuttgart with the message that, as she had not been given just and fair compensation, she would know how, at a future date, to wring out from Wirtemberg a hundred times the modest sum refused her.

The Geheimrathe, thinking their foe vanquished and the affair at an end, laughed at this threat. They would have trembled had they known that the Gravenitz had a plan, and that their Duke was cognisant of the whole matter.