for a political offence in Wirtemberg. In vain he protested and claimed
the protection of Louis XIV. The King at Versailles was busied with the
saving of his soul and with the doctoring of his gangrened knee. So the
doors of the Bastille closed on Baron Forstner, and he was left to
reflect upon the danger of casting aspersions on a woman's beauty.

After some months the rumour of Forstner's imprisonment reached the
Duchesse d'Orleans, who had believed her compatriot returned to Germany.
Now it was a ticklish thing for the Duchess to undertake intervention on
behalf of a Protestant, for though she had joined the Church of Rome on
her marriage to 'Monsieur,' still it was whispered in Paris that she had
reprehensible leanings to the faith of her childhood.

Madame de Maintenon and the King were more than ever hostile towards
heretics, and the Bavarian princess had received several sharp reproofs
on the subject already.

Then came the news that Forstner had been condemned to death in
Stuttgart, and that he was to be conveyed thither without delay.

The Duchesse d'Orleans journeyed to Versailles, and demanded an audience
of her august brother-in-law. The King was in an ungracious mood. He
received his late brother's wife coldly. He regretted that she should
espouse the cause of this foreigner. Really, he had no intention of
interfering in the affairs of any petty German prince. This was merely a
question of international law. If this 'Baron de Forstnere' were in the
Bastille, let him stay there. Louis asked angrily if he were expected to
interest himself in such unimportant details, when he was so profoundly
troubled with affairs of State. Little wonder that the King was not in a
favour-granting humour. The Congress of Utrecht was discussing peace, and
Louis saw that though he had actually gained the day in the Spanish
Succession War, still France had lost hugely in blood and gold, and was
to lose still more in colonies.

But Elizabeth Charlotte was not to be put off thus easily. If it came to
hard words, no one was more competent than she was to utter truth
unshrinkingly. Petty German princes indeed! Louis had been anxious enough
to share in the inheritance from a petty German prince, when, at the
death of her father without male heirs, the Roi Soleil had seen a chance
of grasping a portion of the Bavarian Palatinate! And so she told him in
her loud voice and uncouth French. Madame de Maintenon interposed: Why
did her