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 Graevenitz and Schuetz. 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 Graevenitz. 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'Orleans,
that Princess of Bavaria who had succeeded, and by her sturdy,
uncompromising treatment of the Duc d'Orleans, 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'Orleans, 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