his Highness,
to be a bastard, 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 Schuetz to
Stuttgart with a copy of the imperial document. He laid it before the
Privy Council, and stated that his client, the Countess Graevenitz, 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 Moempelgard before them, and they feared for Wirtemberg to be involved
in a similar tangle.

Now Moempelgard, or Montbeliard, as the French-speaking court named it,
was a small principality 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 Moempelgard's castle. These ladies had had issue, and the
succession to the Moempelgard honours was complicated.

Naturally Stuttgart's Geheimraethe, with this cousinly example in their
minds, longed for the Graevenitz 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 Schuetz 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. Schuetz 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 Geheimraethe 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! Bes