A German Pompadour Part 35

'But, your Highness, her Excellency has carried it to La Favorite,' said the astonished courtier.

'You are to fetch it and bring it here! I tell you to go. If her Excellency will not give it, take it by force--by force, do you hear?

Here is my signet-ring, show her that. Take a company of guards with you--but bring me back that cloth!'

The Duke was beside himself; he was weak from loss of blood, and he had worked himself into a frenzy of fear. Suddenly the woman he had loved for twenty years had become, to his thinking, a dangerous, threatening witch; she who had lain on his breast, his mistress, the woman who had tended him in illness, the hallowed being he had well-nigh wors.h.i.+pped--offering up his country, his wife, his son, all things at her shrine--now appeared before him as the incarnation of evil to be compelled by a company of guards.

In vain the physician essayed to calm his Highness; he was as one distraught, raving frantically of the missing cloth, of spells and incantations.

Roeder, arriving at La Favorite, stationed his guards carefully. As a fact, the gentleman was terribly alarmed. It was no pleasantry to affront the wrath of the Gravenitz. Was she not a tyrant? and tyrants had strange ways of hanging on to power after actual favour was gone past. And was she not a witch? it was not rea.s.suring to incur a witch's curse. Nay, but she was a fallen favourite, the vile amputated canker of a terrible epoch, harmless now the blister of her evil glory was p.r.i.c.ked, and yet----

Politely he requested the Landhofmeisterin to deliver up the missing cloth, but she denied possessing it; he insisted, threatened to call the guard, and the whole house should be searched; he had his Highness's warrant. He showed her the Duke's signet-ring. She raged at him, dared him to oppose her, menaced him. Then, changing her tone, she cajoled him: if she indeed had the cloth, it would be easy for him to retract his statement concerning having seen her purloin it. Then she would be a friend to him; did he forget her power? He questioned her on the uses she would make of a blood-stained linen rag. She told him she had her purposes, and he remembered her witch practices, the stories of the ghastly ingredients of her magic potions. He alluded to witchcraft, and she defied him again, then he called the guard; but when the soldiers'

tread echoed in the corridor, she drew the cloth from a hidden panel in her bureau and flung it at him, with bitter words cursing him. And he departed trembling, the fear of the Gravenitz upon him.

Of course this was repeated in high colours to Serenissimus, and his superst.i.tious terror deepened. Then the valets blabbed as to how Maria had often begged for locks of his Highness's hair, for parings of his nails. More absurdities for the magic love potions, very unappetising too. In a violence of revolt against his once beloved, Eberhard Ludwig signed an edict banis.h.i.+ng the Landhofmeisterin from Ludwigsburg and from Stuttgart. She could remain in Wirtemberg, residing at any of her various castles; she should retain her monies, and effects, and her rank; but all power, all part in the country's government, was taken from her, and he would see her face no more.

In a mighty virtuous frame of mind Serenissimus rode away to Berlin, leaving this doc.u.ment to be enforced in his absence.

Meanwhile the Gravenitz waited in a fever of anxiety at La Favorite. On the day following his Highness's departure, the doc.u.ment was presented to her by Schutz and several officers of the law. She tore it across and across, and laughed in their faces. And the solemn officials retired to communicate with their Duke at Berlin concerning the further treatment of this extraordinary woman. Wirtemberg was much excited, for the news of her condemnation and of her defiance spread through the country. For days she was utterly alone with Maria and her personal domestics.

The Sittmann tribe found it necessary for its health to retire to Teinach, a watering-place in the Black Forest; and Friedrich Gravenitz remained secluded at Welzheim, the manor his sister lent him, and which he chose to regard as his own property. Ludwigsburg was like a city of the dead; the Erbprincessin seldom left her apartments now; day after day she sat brooding in deep melancholy. The Erbprinz sometimes rode out from the palace, but he avoided the direction of La Favorite. The Landhofmeisterin, deprived of the company of the man she had loved during so many years, deprived of her accustomed occupation of governing a country, used to the homage of courtiers and the blandishments of parasites, sank into profound dejection.

After some two weeks the Landhofmeisterin heard the thud of a cantering horse's hoofs nearing La Favorite. A wild hope sprang up in her heart: it was Eberhard Ludwig, of course; he had repented of his harshness, and was coming to lead her back in loving triumph to Ludwigsburg.

The lackey announced that his Highness the Erbprinz awaited her Excellency in the ballroom. Ah! not Serenissimus then; but he had sent his son to tell her the good news.

'Quick, Maria, a dash of rouge, a little powder. Is my hair becomingly dressed? Give me my fan--yes! a rose at my bosom. How do I look?' And the Gravenitz sallied down to meet her beloved's son.

This was indeed a triumph. The Erbprinz had never visited her at Favorite or Freudenthal. Everything was coming right, of course--she had known it would!

'Good morning, Prince Friedrich, it is a great joy to me to see you. Are you well? you look in good health.' It was a very smiling, beautiful woman who spoke. Magnificent--a trifle over-mature perchance; but a full-blown rose is a fine thing, though some prefer the rosebud.

'I thank your Excellency; I am well, but I come on an unpleasant mission--I regret----'

'Serenissimus is not ill, Monseigneur?' she cried.

'No, Madame; my father is in the enjoyment of health, but--but--O Madame!

believe me, I am loth to be the bearer of such evil tidings to you, for you have always been my friend.'

'Prince Friedrich, if I have been your friend, spare me now; tell me without hesitation what your mission is. Alas! I am indeed a stricken woman.'

In truth, her face was tragic. All the more terrible was this menace to one who had dared to build such a structure of hopefulness upon so slender a basis.

'Madame, my father bids me give you this letter. If you do not obey immediately, I am to enforce these commands. I pray you spare me that, dear, dear Madame!' He took her hand in his and kissed it; he was a very tender-hearted, an easily subjugated little grand seigneur.

'Madame la Comtesse de Wurben, Comtesse de Gravenitz, Landhofmeisterin de Wirtemberg.--In view of a great change impending in my dukedom, I command you to depart instantly from my court of Ludwigsburg. You are at liberty to reside at any of the castles you have obtained from me, but I forbid you to venture into my presence or to importune the members either of my government or of my court. You have refused obedience to my commands, delivered by my Finance Minister, Baron Schutz, and by various high law officials. I now make known to you that such future defiance will be punished as traitorous to me. Here is my warrant and signed decree given at Berlin this 29th of May 1730, signed Eberhard Ludwig, Dux Wirtembergis.'

The Landhofmeisterin read this letter once, then mechanically she read it again. It was written by his Highness; no secretary had been intrusted with this precious doc.u.ment. It seemed to her an added cruelty that the well-known handwriting should form these stern words--the graceful, elegant writing which she had seen blazoning her lover's pa.s.sionate, poetic homage to her in words of love and promises of fidelity. The Erbprinz stood silent with bowed head. What would she say, what would she do, this forceful woman? At length, he raised his head and looked at her.

She was still poring over the Duke's letter as though its contents puzzled her. The silence grew intolerable.

'Madame, believe me, I am truly grieved,' he began.

'Grieved? grieved? Ah! who would not be? This is an outrage, a madness.

What! can you believe that I can be banished? I? Why, this whole world is of my making, this Ludwigsburg. Go back and send a messenger to Berlin to say that I will not go.' She spoke quietly, almost indifferently.

'Alas! Madame, if you have not left before sunset, I am bound to have you removed by force,' he answered.

'You? My poor boy! You?--you remove me?' She began to laugh.

'It may be ridiculous, Madame,' he said humbly, 'but such are my father's orders.' She laughed again. 'Come, Madame, give me your answer.

Believe me, I would spare you pain but if you will not go, I am commanded to have you arrested and conveyed to Hohenasperg.' Then the horror of it came to the Landhofmeisterin.

'I to Hohenasperg? O G.o.d! G.o.d! that it should come to this! Ah! the cruelty! But still I will fight to the last--I will never go.' Her voice had risen to shrillness, her face was contorted by anger; she looked incarnate rage, a Megaera. Suddenly her features resumed their usual expression--nay, more, it was the face of the grande charmeuse.

'Prince Friedrich, help me; this is only a pa.s.sing mood of your father's!

Let me stay here till he returns from Berlin. Use your power for my good; you are heir to all this splendour; you will reap the harvest of beauty I have sown at Ludwigsburg. Help me, and you will never regret it.' She had come close to him, smiling into his eyes. The frail, sensitive youth flushed scarlet.

'Prince, you are the image of your father as I knew him twenty years ago.

You bring my youth back to me.' She laid her hand upon his shoulder and drew him towards her. She was very beautiful for all her forty-five years, her presence was intoxication.

'Friedrich, Friedrich, you could revenge so much--so much neglect, if you were my friend.' Her lips were very near to his, her breath was on his cheek. Like most super-sensitive beings, he was vividly pa.s.sionate; and she knew it, and this was her last card: to make him love her, aid her to stay at Favorite, then, when Eberhard Ludwig returned, surely jealousy would recall love. It was a dangerous game enough, but it was her last resource.

'Little Friedrich, who makes me feel young again,' she murmured. Now her lips are on his--and the room swings round him--while the scent of the fading lilacs in the garden is wafted in with delicious, heavy, unwholesome sweetness. And she herself, caught by an eddy of her feigned pa.s.sion, is swept into a wave of sensual recollection. She is in the Rothenwald again on a spring morning--overhead a bird sings a rhapsody--and she----

With a cry the Prince sprang away from her.

'Madame! O Madame! you tempt me from my duty; you must go from here.

Indeed, I cannot help you, but I will not let the guards disturb you, till to-morrow. I pray you, Madame, go this day.'

'Never; you do not know me! I will never go. Use force if you will--but I stay at Ludwigsburg.'

The Erbprinz turned away sorrowfully.

'Then I cannot help you.' He took her hand and raised it to his lips.

'Farewell, Madame,' he whispered. Did his lips linger on her hand a little longer than custom dictated? She thought so, and smiled to herself as Prince Friedrich left her.

Hardly had the Erbprinz departed when she heard the sound of approaching wheels in the avenue. 'I am receiving many visitors to-day,' she thought bitterly. To her surprise Monseigneur de Zollern was announced. He greeted the Landhofmeisterin warmly, though gravely, and immediately commenced questioning her on her position. She told him the details of the foregoing weeks. Zollern listened attentively, with his hands crossed as usual over the porcelain handle of his stick. He had grown terribly old in spite of his straight and dapper figure, and his face was like ancient parchment; only the bright, restless eyes seemed eagerly alive.

He told the Landhofmeisterin that the news of her misfortune had reached him, and that he had come to counsel her immediate retreat. He argued with her gently, but she was obdurate; go she would not. Then the old man begged her to depart; he prayed her, by Madame de Ruth's memory, to be reasonable.

'Consider, Madame,' he said, 'I am a very old man--yes, yes, old and broken--and I have travelled far to save you from your own obstinacy, for you are dear to me; you are my one remaining link with the past, with my past youth. You were Madame de Ruth's friend, and I cherish you as that.

Yes; she was the love of my life--I may say it now, for it is ancient history--and she loved you. Would she not have counselled prudence? Fly now, that you may return later.'

At this moment a lackey brought a folded paper to the Gravenitz.

'Unknown to me, General Pruckdorff had received orders from my father to expel you by force from Favorite and Ludwigsburg if you have not left by six of the clock this evening. I pray you, Madame, fly! I shall never forget you.--FRIEDRICH LUDWIG, Erbprinz.'

Without a word the Landhofmeisterin handed the paper to Zollern.