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.
It happened that, shortly before the Grävenitz was banished from Ludwigsburg, Eberhard Ludwig, in the course of his wood wanderings, came to Einsiedel where stood the ruined monastery and the fateful thorn-tree. An old peasant woman, who was gathering sticks for her fire in the deserted monastery garden, told him of the legend, and, pointing to the whitethorn, exclaimed: 'You who are a traveller, go to the palace and tell the Duke that the thorn has blossomed. Tell him to leave the wanton Land-despoiler, and go back to his true wife. God has caused the thorn to bloom anew in token of pardon, and there will be an heir born to Wirtemberg to take the place of the dying Erbprinz.' Now the Erbprinz was not dying when the old crone spoke these words, but Eberhard Ludwig, always feverishly anxious for his son's welfare, hurried back to Ludwigsburg in an agony of fear and related the peasant woman's prophecy, and the strange fact of that ancient thorn-tree putting forth a spray of white blossom. Her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin had been much offended by the story, and had mocked Serenissimus for his credulity.
Of course when, shortly after this event, Eberhard Ludwig repudiated his mistress and returned to his neglected Duchess, popular report immediately had it that the whitethorn had prophesied the happy occurrence, and that her Highness Johanna Elizabetha was to become a mother. This the Grävenitz had heard during her sojourn at Freudenthal, but it was in November at Asperg that she heard the Duchess was indeed with child. At first she vowed she did not believe it; it was an absurd story started by the believers in that ridiculous thorn-tree; but when the fact of her Highness's pregnancy could be doubted no longer, the Grävenitz fell into an agony of jealousy. She paced her small room like some tortured tigress; she cursed all men; she sobbed in a passion of anger. Waking or sleeping the thought never left her. Her dreams were for ever of Eberhard Ludwig and the woman she hated. God, how she despised her! How she shuddered at the thought of her motherhood. She told herself that it was disgust, and even as she formulated the thought she knew that it was envy—cruel, aching envy which tortured her. She was jealous, then? She? The very supposition was an abasement. Could she be jealous of that dull, heavy woman, with her reddened eyes? But she would be the mother of his child. . . .
They told her that prayers for her Highness's safe delivery were offered up in all the churches in Wirtemberg, and that there was immense rejoicing in the land. There was no doubt then, and the Grävenitz's dreams were unending of the Duchess holding out a beautiful man-child to Eberhard Ludwig, who smiled in happiness and peace.
At length one day in December Maria told her that there were exciting rumours in the village which nestles at the base of the fortress rock of Hohenasperg. The Duchess was sick unto death, they said, and the doctors were entirely puzzled. Into the Grävenitz's heart there crept a ray of hope. God forgive her! she prayed for death to visit Stuttgart's castle.
Daily she sent Maria to the village to learn the news. One day the governor came to her and told her he had a terrible thing to communicate. Good, honest man, he often spent an hour with his prisoner telling her news of the outer world.