'Monseigneur, my Prince, and once my friend! Though it has been your pleasure to discredit me, I cannot rest until I have let you know the truth. You are being grossly abused, your noble trust and love made mock of by a creature too vile for human words to describe. A woman, who to her other lovers holds you up to scorn and ridicule! yes, ridicule of your passion, making mock, betraying the secrets of your bed. Besides, it is she who has the gulden which you accused me of purloining; she to whom half your revenues are carried, and you are doled out a paltry sum which, after all, you spend again upon this creature. You are weary of her, too; all your Dukedom knows that right well--weary of her, and you dare not dismiss her! The people laugh: your subjects, your friends, strangers, other princes, all Europe laughs. See her! observe her hideous faults, her foul blemishes of mind and body, her filthy actions!' Then followed the names of his rival lovers, and a list of the vast sums she had filched from the ducal treasury. All this set forth so cleverly, with such apparent proof, that she trembled as she read. There were official business transactions accurately quoted and put in such a light as to seem to be robberies. It was a dangerous letter for her--half truth, half falsehood, difficult to unravel, impossible to deny entirely. 'Honour binds you, you say,' the epistle continued. 'Ah! my Prince! you have a toy which has turned to a viper in your hand! Throw it from you! Other princes have done so, and the world has applauded. Take a fair and noble mistress, one younger, less rapacious. Consider this woman: already she grows gross; in a few years' time she will be a mountain of flesh; her eyes are dimming, her lips are paler, her teeth less white than they were when she came from her obscure home.' Wilhelmine, in all the magnificence of her beauty, of her maturity, read thus far quietly; then, raging, she sprang to her feet. 'I could have forgiven you some of your insults, Forstner, but this is too much! By God! by God! you shall suffer! I swear it by my salvation!' She read on: details too disgusting, too gross to write down here, foul accusation upon accusation, hideous blasphemies against her bodily beauty. Of a truth, not even a saint could have forgiven the writer of that letter--and Wilhelmine von Graevenitz was no saint. CHAPTER XVII THE BURNING IN EFFIGY ON the morning following the masquerade, his Highness's Chief Officer of the Secret Service of Wirtemberg craved audience. The Secret Service had been instituted by Eberhard Ludwig after the murderous attack upon the Graevenitz in Duke Christopher's grotto. In the unquiet state of the country, rife with discontent and its attendant conspiracies, such a service was absolutely necessary; but, of course, this system of espionage was most unpopular, and as the Landhofmeisterin was credited with the institution of the Secret Service, the people's fear and hatred of her increased.