A German Pompadour Part 28

When the news came from Paris that Forstner had been released from the Bastille, the Landhofmeisterin flew into a towering pa.s.sion. The Geheimrathe 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 Wurben--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 Gravenitz, was Minister of the Interior; Baron Schutz, Minister for Foreign Affairs; Baron Sittmann, Minister of Finance; and two brothers Pfau, cousins of Schutz, 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 Gravenitz'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The death sentence was rescinded, of course, pending this new trial.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 doc.u.ment 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 d.u.c.h.esse d'Orleans, inspired this letter, or else Forstner had developed a grim wit in his day of trouble.

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

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

'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 antic.i.p.ation 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 a.s.semblage 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 n.o.bility, 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sisted 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 a.s.sociation in ignominy, between the stiff, swaying waxen thing and the condemned criminals. Slowly this strange procession pa.s.sed through the crowd, and the three figures--the two living, and the gruesome, inanimate parody of life--were pushed into the circle of f.a.ggots 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.ble 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 f.a.ggots, 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 s.h.i.+elds 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.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SINNER'S PALACE

FORSTNER'S fate 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 t.i.tles, 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 G.o.d!' 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 Gravenitzin. Eberhard Ludwig was a mere shadow at her side, 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 Wurben'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 una.s.sailable, 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 Gustrow, and she did not forget this precept. She spent freely and magnificently, but she ama.s.sed an enormous fund in reserve. No year pa.s.sed without some beautiful property becoming hers--broad acres of field and forest, entire villages, old and lordly castles. To name but a few of these: Gochsheim, Welzheim, Brenz, Stetten (the d.u.c.h.ess-mother's dower-house), Freudenthal, the Castle of Urach, and the Chateau 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 fas.h.i.+on. She had caused the stringent laws against the Jews to be relaxed; they were permitted to wors.h.i.+p 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 Gravenitz 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 Gravenitz 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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! Philomele!'

and for an hour the glamour of youth and an echo of the early days of a great pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sionate 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 Melac, 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 minister _de facto_ of 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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. Pa.s.sion 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 offering to 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.