Naturally Stuttgart's Geheimraethe, with this cousinly example in their minds, longed for the Graevenitz to renounce all future claims upon the Dukedom of Wirtemberg, both for herself and for any issue of her 'marriage' with Eberhard Ludwig. Thus when Schuetz conveyed her demand for money as a condition to her renouncement, they listened to the preposterous request, and declared themselves ready to pay the favourite compensation. Schuetz returned to Schaffhausen with this news, and was immediately re-despatched to Stuttgart with a demand for two hundred thousand gulden as the price of her renouncement. The Geheimraethe were aghast. Twenty thousand, nay, even forty thousand, gulden they would pay, but two hundred thousand! This vast sum to be wrung out of the war-impoverished land! Impossible! Besides, it was as much as the marriage-portion of six princesses of Wirtemberg. The Duke was approached. He retorted that the Countess of Graevenitz was perfectly justified in any demand she chose to make. The Duchess-mother arrived, and spoke, as usual, plainly to her son; but he had not forgotten how his mother had dragged him, like a repentant school-child, from Urach to be reconciled to Johanna Elizabetha. He owed the Duchess-mother a grudge, and paid it by remaining firm concerning the justice of Wilhelmine's claim. The Privy Council offered her twenty thousand gulden. Then forty thousand. Both sums were refused. 'Two hundred thousand or nothing,' she answered. So the negotiations were broken off. Meanwhile, had the Geheimraethe but known it, the 'Revers' had long been signed, sealed, and despatched to Vienna. Wilhelmine again sent Schuetz to Stuttgart with the message that, as she had not been given just and fair compensation, she would know how, at a future date, to wring out from Wirtemberg a hundred times the modest sum refused her. The Geheimraethe, thinking their foe vanquished and the affair at an end, laughed at this threat. They would have trembled had they known that the Graevenitz had a plan, and that their Duke was cognisant of the whole matter. * * * * * Wilhelmine, gazing at the waters of the Rhine with her half-closed, serpent-like eyes, sought for some device which should enable her to return to Stuttgart. In the first place, she loved power; in the second, she loved Eberhard Ludwig; in the third, she yearned to outwit her enemy Johanna Elizabetha and her opposers generally. Then she longed once more to defy the Duchess-mother, whom she, at the same time, greatly dreaded.