how to tell you--It is
ordered that you shall travel to-day--immediately,' he said.

'A prisoner has no choice, Monsieur,' she answered bitterly.

* * * * *

As the cortege passed out of the Hohenasperg gate, the first snowflakes
fell, and when they reached the village at the foot of the hill there was
a whirling storm.

The journey to Urach through the snow was terrible. For hours the
cavalcade wandered in the snowdrifts between Nuertingen and Urach, and
when at length the unhappy woman was housed for a few hours' rest in a
village inn, her slumber was broken by the sounds of rude merriment in
the hall below her sleeping-room, where the peasants were dancing. She
was wont to say afterwards that this trivial episode had been one of her
most painful experiences. Her nerves were on the rack, for she expected
that some cruel trial awaited her at Urach. She was terribly weary from
the long hours of wandering, and from cold and exposure; her pride had
been galled by the gaping, laughing, jeering, mocking crowd of peasants
which had stood round her while the captain of the guard made
arrangements for her night's lodging. Then her sensitive ear was tortured
by the peasants' music, which beat on and on in monotonous, inharmonious
measure all through the night.

If suffering is atonement for sin, certain it is that the Graevenitz
agonised at Urach. Her imprisonment was infinitely more rigorous than it
had been at Hohenasperg. The governor treated her with scant
consideration, and answered her questions shortly. He forbade the
faithful Maria either to go to the town or to speak with the other
inhabitants of the fortress prison. Thus the Graevenitz had no knowledge
of the doings in the world. She tasted real imprisonment, the torture of
being entirely cut off from human interests. Also she was left in
ignorance of her future. Death, banishment, perpetual imprisonment? She
knew nothing. She penned passionate appeals to his Highness, but the
governor informed her that he could forward no writings from a prisoner
awaiting trial.

'When shall I be tried, and for what offences?' she demanded.

'I am not at liberty to say,' he returned, and left her.

She fell ill, or feigned to do so, and when the apothecary tended her she
offered him vast sums if he would tell her what had occurred in
Stuttgart. The man reported this to the prison governor, who further
restricted the Graevenitz's liberty in pun