tement concerning having seen her purloin it. Then she would be a
friend to him; did he forget her power? He questioned her on the uses she
would make of a blood-stained linen rag. She told him she had her
purposes, and he remembered her witch practices, the stories of the
ghastly ingredients of her magic potions. He alluded to witchcraft, and
she defied him again, then he called the guard; but when the soldiers'
tread echoed in the corridor, she drew the cloth from a hidden panel in
her bureau and flung it at him, with bitter words cursing him. And he
departed trembling, the fear of the Graevenitz upon him.

Of course this was repeated in high colours to Serenissimus, and his
superstitious terror deepened. Then the valets blabbed as to how Maria
had often begged for locks of his Highness's hair, for parings of his
nails. More absurdities for the magic love potions, very unappetising
too. In a violence of revolt against his once beloved, Eberhard Ludwig
signed an edict banishing the Landhofmeisterin from Ludwigsburg and from
Stuttgart. She could remain in Wirtemberg, residing at any of her various
castles; she should retain her monies, and effects, and her rank; but all
power, all part in the country's government, was taken from her, and he
would see her face no more.

In a mighty virtuous frame of mind Serenissimus rode away to Berlin,
leaving this document to be enforced in his absence.

Meanwhile the Graevenitz waited in a fever of anxiety at La Favorite. On
the day following his Highness's departure, the document was presented to
her by Schuetz and several officers of the law. She tore it across and
across, and laughed in their faces. And the solemn officials retired to
communicate with their Duke at Berlin concerning the further treatment of
this extraordinary woman. Wirtemberg was much excited, for the news of
her condemnation and of her defiance spread through the country. For days
she was utterly alone with Maria and her personal domestics.

The Sittmann tribe found it necessary for its health to retire to
Teinach, a watering-place in the Black Forest; and Friedrich Graevenitz
remained secluded at Welzheim, the manor his sister lent him, and which
he chose to regard as his own property. Ludwigsburg was like a city of
the dead; the Erbprincessin seldom left her apartments now; day after day
she sat brooding in deep melancholy. The Erbprinz sometimes rode out from
the palace, but he avoided the direction of La F