she scorned to fly before the storm which
she knew was breaking. For three days and nights her carriage stood at
her gates ready to take her away to safety; but she refused to move a
step.

Then one morning, before she had left her bed, a major of the guards,
with a posse of soldiers, appeared at her bedroom door armed with a
warrant for her arrest; and for many weeks she was a closely guarded
prisoner in her own house, subject to daily insults and indignities from
men who, a few weeks earlier, had saluted her as a Queen.

At the trial which followed some very grave indictments were preferred
against her. She was charged with having betrayed State secrets; with
having robbed the Royal Exchequer; stolen the King's portfolio; and
removed the priceless solitaire diamond from his crown, and the very
rings from his fingers as he lay dying. To these and other equally grave
charges the Countess gave a dignified denial, which the evidence she was
able to produce supported. The diamond and the rings were, in fact,
discovered in places indicated by her where they had been put, by the
King's orders, for safe custody.

The trial had a happier ending than, from the malignity of her enemies,
especially of the King, might have been expected. After three months of
durance she was removed to a Silesian fortress. Her houses and lands
were taken from her; but her furniture and jewels were left untouched,
and with them she was allowed to enjoy a pension of four thousand
thalers a year. Such was the judgment of a Court which proved more
merciful than she had perhaps a right to expect. And two months later,
the influence and pleading of her friends set her free from her
fortress-prison to spend her life where and as she would.

The sun of her splendour had indeed set, but many years of peaceful and
not unhappy life remained for our ex-Queen, who was still in the prime
of her womanhood and beauty and with the magnetism that, to her last
day, brought men to her feet. At fifty she was able to inspire such
passion in the breast of a young artist, Francis Holbein, that he asked
and won her hand in marriage. But this romance was short-lived, for
within a year he left her, to spend the remainder of her days in Paris,
Vienna, and her native Prussia. Here her adventurous career closed in
such obscurity, at the age of sixty-eight, that even those who
ministered to her last moments were unaware that the dying woman was the
Countess who had played s