Royal Highness take so deep an interest in this 'Forstnere?' she
asked.

'Because he is a Bavarian, and his father and mine were friends,' she was
told by the Duchess.

'Ah! a Bavarian--then a Catholique?' the saintly Marquise supposed.

'No indeed!'

Things looked very black for Forstner. But the Duchesse d'Orleans played
her trump card. Though a Protestant, Forstner was a virtuous man, and the
reason of his disgrace in Wirtemberg was simply that he opposed the
terrible licence of the Duke's mistress.

Now the Marquise de Maintenon was a little sensitive on the subject of
mistresses, and when Elizabeth Charlotte invoked her aid against the
machinations of a wanton, old Veuve Scarron changed her tone. Then in the
midst of the discussion the King had a twinge in his gangrened knee, and
signed Forstner's release, in order to be rid of this pertinacious
princess.

Meanwhile there had been storms at Ludwigsburg. In December 1711 the new
Emperor Charles VI., former pretender to the Spanish throne, was crowned
Emperor at Frankfort. The reigning princes of the various allied German
states attended the coronation of the German king, crowned Emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire. Eberhard Ludwig of Wirtemberg repaired to Frankfort
for the historic ceremony, and it was the right of the Duchess of
Wirtemberg to attend, if she so desired; but Johanna Elizabetha remained
in her dreary black-hung apartments, sewing coarse linen garments for the
poor, and weeping her desolation. Pageants were not for her obviously.

But the Landhofmeisterin demanded to go to Frankfort with her Duke.
Zollern and Madame de Ruth advised her to refrain from so preposterous a
request; but she had set her mind upon it, and she importuned
Serenissimus, who, poor man, was indeed all unable to grant her this
whim.

There were pleadings, tears, angry words, finally a serious quarrel
between the lovers. Friedrich Graevenitz, now a Privy Councillor and
Minister of State, remonstrated pompously with his sister. He had gained
nearly all he desired through her, and now affected to be the serious
official, the hard-working minister and grave man of the world. She bade
him return to his petty businesses of administration, and warned him
that, did he interfere with her, she would cause him to be dismissed.
Friedrich aimed at being Premier of Wirtemberg, and thus he bowed down
once more to the all-powerful lady. The Landhofmeisterin continued to
pester the Duke to