THE BURNING IN EFFIGY
ON the morning following the masquerade, his Highness's Chief Officer of
the Secret Service of Wirtemberg craved audience. The Secret Service had
been instituted by Eberhard Ludwig after the murderous attack upon the
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.