inister of Finance; and two brothers Pfau, cousins of Schuetz, held
office as Councillors. For appearance sake (not that the Landhofmeisterin
considered that often) there were several minor councillors, men of no
importance, who obeyed implicitly the autocratic, vigilant, relentless
President of Council. Thus the entire government lay in the Graevenitz's
capable hands. Small wonder that Forstner trembled.

The Council decreed that the recalcitrant Baron was to be summoned to
attend his trial forthwith, and that a hope of rehabilitation should be
held out to him if he came immediately to his country's first tribunal.
The death sentence was rescinded, of course, pending this new trial.

Forstner replied to this official document that he had no intention of
putting his head between the wolf's teeth, and that he intended to appeal
in Vienna against the wrongful detention of his monies and properties in
Wirtemberg. He reminded the honourable Council that he was by birth a
Bavarian, and that, though he had resided in Wirtemberg, and owned lands
in that dukedom, still the Wirtemberg tribunal had no jurisdiction over
him.

Upon receipt of this answer the Privy Council solemnly recondemned
Forstner to death, confiscated his Wirtemberg properties, and further
decreed that if he refused to be executed in person, he should be burned
in effigy in the market-place of Stuttgart by the common hangman.

Forstner's response to this was a letter to the Landhofmeisterin, wherein
he suggested that he should summon a Privy Council on his estates in
Alsace, composed of his valet, his gardener, his lackey, and the village
fiddler. That he proposed, as President of this Council, to condemn her
to death; and should she not joyfully repair for her execution, he would
have her hanged in effigy, head downwards, over the pig-stye. Probably
that drastic Bavarian, the Duchesse d'Orleans, inspired this letter, or
else Forstner had developed a grim wit in his day of trouble.

The Duke and the Landhofmeisterin raged, and the day of the burning in
effigy was fixed.

Then the officer of the Secret Service came to Ludwigsburg carrying a
bundle of placards torn from the house walls in Stuttgart. Hundreds of
these writings had been nailed to the walls and the doors, and seemed to
resprout there like magic mushrooms, for as fast as the agent and his men
removed one, another appeared in its place. These handbills set forth
the gist of Forstner's letter to