A German Pompadour Part 38

As the cortege pa.s.sed out of the Hohenasperg gate, the first snowflakes fell, and when they reached the village at the foot of the hill there was a whirling storm.

The journey to Urach through the snow was terrible. For hours the cavalcade wandered in the snowdrifts between Nurtingen and Urach, and when at length the unhappy woman was housed for a few hours' rest in a village inn, her slumber was broken by the sounds of rude merriment in the hall below her sleeping-room, where the peasants were dancing. She was wont to say afterwards that this trivial episode had been one of her most painful experiences. Her nerves were on the rack, for she expected that some cruel trial awaited her at Urach. She was terribly weary from the long hours of wandering, and from cold and exposure; her pride had been galled by the gaping, laughing, jeering, mocking crowd of peasants which had stood round her while the captain of the guard made arrangements for her night's lodging. Then her sensitive ear was tortured by the peasants' music, which beat on and on in monotonous, inharmonious measure all through the night.

If suffering is atonement for sin, certain it is that the Gravenitz agonised at Urach. Her imprisonment was infinitely more rigorous than it had been at Hohenasperg. The governor treated her with scant consideration, and answered her questions shortly. He forbade the faithful Maria either to go to the town or to speak with the other inhabitants of the fortress prison. Thus the Gravenitz had no knowledge of the doings in the world. She tasted real imprisonment, the torture of being entirely cut off from human interests. Also she was left in ignorance of her future. Death, banishment, perpetual imprisonment? She knew nothing. She penned pa.s.sionate appeals to his Highness, but the governor informed her that he could forward no writings from a prisoner awaiting trial.

'When shall I be tried, and for what offences?' she demanded.

'I am not at liberty to say,' he returned, and left her.

She fell ill, or feigned to do so, and when the apothecary tended her she offered him vast sums if he would tell her what had occurred in Stuttgart. The man reported this to the prison governor, who further restricted the Gravenitz's liberty in punishment. She was no longer permitted to walk on the ramparts. She grew really ill after this. For many days she lay upon the rude pallet, which was called bed at Urach, and, turning her face to the wall, refused to take nourishment. Maria, in an agony of fear, sought the governor and told him her Excellency lay dying.

'A very curious coincidence,' said the governor musingly.

'How, sir? I do not understand,' inquired Maria.

'It is said that his Highness lies dying also; there can be no harm in telling you that,' replied the cautious official. Maria, burdened with her sorrowful secret, returned to watch over her beloved mistress. For weeks the Gravenitz pined in hopeless sadness and physical illness, then her old spirit returned, and she faced life again. Maria had not told her that Serenissimus was sick unto death, dead perhaps by this time; she knew not, for none at Hohen-Urach would answer the witch's serving-maid.

Spring came, and the Gravenitz pet.i.tioned the prison governor to permit her to walk on the ramparts as before. Unwillingly the man acceded to her request, and once more she was at liberty to breathe the air of heaven, and to feast her eyes upon the majestic view of the hill-country. But there was pain for her, even in this her one enjoyment, for from the rampart she looked down upon that little hill-town of Urach which had seen her in the heyday of her youth and love. She could even see the windows of the Golden Hall where she had held high revel on that summer night so long ago, and whence she had fled before the Emperor's stern decree. Remembrance was pain, and yet her thoughts lingering in the past brought her echoes of joy and laughter. What matter if the echo was softened by a sigh?

At length, in August, an attorney waited upon her in her prison. He was charged to defend her in her trial, he said. A semblance of justice was to be meted out to her; she should benefit by the pleadings of a man of law. This personage was a village notary, and all unfitted by knowledge or experience to battle against the skilled prosecutors. And yet she was grateful; for, at least, she would thus learn of what she was accused.

The list of her crimes was appalling. Firstly: treason. Secondly: purloining of lands and monies. Thirdly: witchcraft and black magic.

Fourthly: bigamous intent. Fifthly: attempted murder. It is characteristic of the age that the fifth indictment should not have been the first.

Her treason consisted in having grasped the reins of government from the hand of their rightful wielder, his Highness Eberhard Ludwig of Wirtemberg; in having kept back from his knowledge many facts in the administration of the country, and destroying doc.u.ments addressed to him.

Also in having been untrue to him in word and deed. Almost comic this last--a sort of topsy-turvy adultery charge!

'Purloining of lands and monies.' She replied that if his Highness's presents were accounted to her as peculation, she had been guilty. For the rest she, having governed the country in his name and with his sanction, had made free use of the revenues for legitimate and public official purposes, exactly as do other rulers, be they kings, dukes, or ministers of state.

To the charge of witchcraft and black magic she refused to make answer, save that she denied harming man, woman, child, or beast. She was still hoist with her own petard: the pitiful belief in the potency of her absurdities.

Bigamous intent she repudiated proudly. She had been married in all legal form, and according to the ancient privileges of ruling princes to take to wife whom they chose, provided they, by open and public decree, declared any prior union null and void. It had pleased the Emperor as over-lord to decide otherwise, and she had bowed to this decision, thus forfeiting her just rights. For this she could not be punished, she averred.

The attempted murder she denied absolutely. It was an absurd story founded on the indiscretion of an insane servant, whom she had dismissed from her service.

For the rest, she referred her accusers and her judges to the first, and only competent witness on her side, viz. his Highness Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Wirtemberg.

Such in few words are the contents of the ma.s.sive dossier of her trial, and her dignified answers.

The details these gentlemen of the law permitted themselves to prepare are numerous, and unfit for publication to-day. Her alleged misconduct (she being mistress, not wife--the term seems strangely applied!) is accompanied with a dozen disgusting stories, which it must be said were entirely fabricated for the trial; and, as she herself pointed out, the chief and only competent witness on her side was the man she had loved and lived with for over twenty years,--who, however, was the very person to permit the commencement of this trial, and must have read and approved the accusations in all their revolting details! He also, and he alone, could prove that the woman had governed, purloined, etcetera, with his sanction. He alone could say whether he had made free gifts to his beloved mistress of lands, jewels, and monies; or whether she had appropriated them without his consent.

Concerning the witchcraft charge it is difficult to exculpate the Gravenitz, seeing she herself refused to deny her magic practices, and there is little doubt that she possessed that magnetic or hypnotic power, the use whereof our ancestors called witchcraft. It is curious to speculate how much of this power, in wonderfully subtle and varied forms, exists in every human being of whom we say: 'They have great personal charm.'

The village notary carried the Gravenitz's answers to Stuttgart, and for many weeks the unhappy woman heard no more of her trial. She waited in a fever of impatience, but she dared not make any endeavour to obtain news for fear the governor should see fit once more to restrict her little liberty.

Her pride was not broken; it was terribly sentient, quivering with painful defeat and humiliation. Worse than all was the silence she was forced to maintain. She spoke with Maria, but the good, tender-hearted peasant, though she sympathised pa.s.sionately and with that n.o.ble loyalty of which such women are capable, yet she could not comprehend or respond to the workings of her mistress's brain, could not offer consolation to the cultured mind.

In truth, it was a terrible downfall, a disaster; this gorgeous life, this towering success, which of a sudden had been broken, flung down into the very depths of mortal abas.e.m.e.nt.

The summer days pa.s.sed. Autumn came, and still no news arrived from Stuttgart, nor did the notary return to give her information. Suspense deepened to melancholy, and, as the days dragged by, melancholy was supplanted by despair. 'I shall die in Hohen-Urach,' she said to Maria.

At length towards the beginning of November the notary arrived.

'Your trial will take place soon, Excellency,' he said. 'It has been r.e.t.a.r.ded by his Highness's illness; that being over, the matter will proceed.'

The man rubbed his hands in self-satisfaction. He was persuaded that the authorities in Stuttgart had chosen him for his qualities of mind and knowledge of law, and he had become a very important personage in his own estimation and in that of his cronies in the village.

'His Highness's illness, Herr Markle? I pray you tell me what has ailed the Duke?' Her voice shook a little, but the man had spoken so airily that she could not believe the Duke's illness had been serious.

'Ah, Excellency! you were unaware of the sad circ.u.mstances? Yes, truly, a long and painful malady; lung trouble it was.'

'It is over then? quite pa.s.sed? I rejoice,' she returned.

'Yes, Excellency; it ended a week ago. His Highness died in his sleep.'

She looked at him for a full moment as one deaf, who, knowing some one has spoken some word, hears not and wonders pitifully. The notary had turned away and busied himself with writings and doc.u.ments on the table.

Already his thoughts were rehearsing a wonderful oration he would speak, a masterpiece of pleading. What a great man he was, to be sure! Of course, he would move to Stuttgart. His ambition soared--surely a very great lawyer.

A rustle of silken garments in the room behind him, and two hands fell on his shoulders: hands of iron they seemed.

'Say that again; you do not know what you have said.' It was a strange voice which spoke: a voice so hoa.r.s.e, so toneless, that the fat little man trembled, recalling in a flash the stories of witches' transformation into ravening wolves or terrible demons. He wriggled round. The Gravenitz stood over him, her hands upon his shoulders, her eyes like two flames scanning his face.

'Say what, Excellency? I do not know----' The trivial fact of the Duke's death and of this woman's agony had been lost for him in his dream of his own judicial splendour.

'What did you say of his Highness? Tell me, or I will kill you,' she returned in the same fearful voice.

'I said what all the world knows: that the Duke Eberhard Ludwig died from lung trouble, on the 31st of October--a week ago,'--he answered angrily, struggling to remove those gripping hands from his shoulders.

'It is a lie! Another lie to torture me. Go, you lying, cruel devil--the Duke shall punish you.'

She was mad for the moment; sense, dignity, all was swept away in her terrified fury. She pushed the man from the room, her murderous hands gripping and bruising his shoulders with demoniacal force.

'Go, liar!' she cried, as she thrust the little man through the door.

She stood silent and motionless. 'He said that all the world knew,' she whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

She flung herself face downwards on the stone floor of the prison-room, moaning and biting her hands like one possessed of a devil.

Duke Karl Alexander, successor to Eberhard Ludwig, was a gallant gentleman, hero of a hundred battles. He was received in Wirtemberg with popular enthusiasm, in spite of the d.a.m.ning fact that he was a Roman Catholic. He rea.s.sured his people by swearing to uphold the Evangelical Church. This being so, he began his reign with the entire approbation of the Wirtembergers, and in the press of business and rejoicings the trial of the Gravenitz seemed forgotten. Still, the ma.s.s of carefully prepared accusations remained, and the gentlemen of the law but bided their time.

Meanwhile the chorus of approval in Stuttgart wavered; for if Eberhard Ludwig had countenanced the Land-despoiler, Karl Alexander was also ruled by a favourite, into whose hands he confided the administration of the Dukedom. This favourite was Joseph Suss Oppenheimer, a Frankfort Jew. To the horror of officialdom, Suss was made Minister of Finance, and, in point of fact, chief adviser to the new Duke.

Unheard of that a Jew should be admitted into the government! That one of the despised race should appear at court; not only appear, but rule, direct all things, be the familiar friend of a n.o.ble Duke!

If money had been levied by the Gravenitz, far heavier taxes were imposed by Suss Oppenheimer. If the court at Ludwigsburg had been brilliant and lavish in the Land-despoiler's day, it was the scene of an unending series of costly festivities under the new regime. And if the late Duke's mistress had been ruinous to the country's finance, the new Duke maintained half a dozen such ladies in the greatest splendour. Suss was accused of arranging the Duke's relations with these ladies, and of sharing their favours with his unsuspecting patron. It is certain that the Jew led a dissolute life, and that his amours were numerous.

The Wirtembergers were in despair, and murmured more ominously than ever; but they were powerless. Suss was master of the situation, exactly as the Gravenitz had been before.