Then came the news that Forstner had been condemned to death in Stuttgart, and that he was to be conveyed thither without delay. The Duchesse d'Orleans journeyed to Versailles, and demanded an audience of her august brother-in-law. The King was in an ungracious mood. He received his late brother's wife coldly. He regretted that she should espouse the cause of this foreigner. Really, he had no intention of interfering in the affairs of any petty German prince. This was merely a question of international law. If this 'Baron de Forstnere' were in the Bastille, let him stay there. Louis asked angrily if he were expected to interest himself in such unimportant details, when he was so profoundly troubled with affairs of State. Little wonder that the King was not in a favour-granting humour. The Congress of Utrecht was discussing peace, and Louis saw that though he had actually gained the day in the Spanish Succession War, still France had lost hugely in blood and gold, and was to lose still more in colonies. But Elizabeth Charlotte was not to be put off thus easily. If it came to hard words, no one was more competent than she was to utter truth unshrinkingly. Petty German princes indeed! Louis had been anxious enough to share in the inheritance from a petty German prince, when, at the death of her father without male heirs, the Roi Soleil had seen a chance of grasping a portion of the Bavarian Palatinate! And so she told him in her loud voice and uncouth French. Madame de Maintenon interposed: Why did her Royal Highness take so deep an interest in this 'Forstnere?' she asked. 'Because he is a Bavarian, and his father and mine were friends,' she was told by the Duchess. 'Ah! a Bavarian--then a Catholique?' the saintly Marquise supposed. 'No indeed!' Things looked very black for Forstner. But the Duchesse d'Orleans played her trump card. Though a Protestant, Forstner was a virtuous man, and the reason of his disgrace in Wirtemberg was simply that he opposed the terrible licence of the Duke's mistress. Now the Marquise de Maintenon was a little sensitive on the subject of mistresses, and when Elizabeth Charlotte invoked her aid against the machinations of a wanton, old Veuve Scarron changed her tone. Then in the midst of the discussion the King had a twinge in his gangrened knee, and signed Forstner's release, in order to be rid of this pertinacious princess.