A commission waited upon her, demanding the restitution of the jewels of Wirtemberg. Some she had carried with her to Hohenasperg, some had been already found at Freudenthal. It cost her a pang to part with the jewels. Had not Eberhard Ludwig given each one to her with a lover's vow, a passionate word? They demanded also that she should give up certain locks of his Highness's hair which she had unlawfully retained for purposes of detestable magic. She made answer that she had but one strand of his hair in a diamond locket. She said that she had worn this on her heart for twenty years. 'Is that magic, Messieurs?' she asked. Had they known it, they had indeed touched upon one of her sorceress secrets--the charm of a woman who can love a man with undying poetry and romance. They told her that she must give up this pathetic lock of hair, that she retained it to brew love potions and such abominations. They took it from her, leaving her the empty crystal locket with its encircling diamonds. 'How you fear me, Messieurs!' she said with a flash of her old defiance. Then they left her with her empty locket and her empty life. Yet her atonement was only beginning; 'the wages of sin is death,' and worse than death a long-drawn agony of humiliation and loneliness. Abasement, shame, defeat, fear, inaction, loneliness, yearning--all these she had drunk in her cup of suffering, but in the dregs there remained one more drop of gall--jealousy. Now, in the spring before she left Ludwigsburg, she had been annoyed by a rumour which had caused much commotion among the Wirtemberg peasants, and even the courtiers had been infected with a wave of superstitious interest. In the house of Wirtemberg there is a legend which tells how Count Eberhard the Bearded, in humility and repentance of his youthful sins, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem accompanied by twenty-four noble youths bound by sacred vows to purity and godly life. When Count Eberhard was praying before the Holy Sepulchre, of a sudden a withered whitethorn-tree quickened and blossomed in token of God's grace, and a priest in Eberhard's following prophesied that so long as the world lasted, this thorn-tree should flower whenever the noble race of Wirtemberg should bloom anew. Piously the pilgrims bore the thorn-tree back to their native land, and set it in a fair and sheltered spot near to the abode of a venerable hermit. Here Count Eberhard instituted an order of prayerful monks, garbed in fair blue habits, and for many generations these holy men tended the thorn-tree, building giant supports beneath its spreading roots and vigorous branches. In Protestant days the poor thorn-tree was forgotten, save by the peasants who clung to their old legends and vowed that, whenever an heir was born to the house of Wirtemberg, the aged thorn put forth a flowering branch.