'What did you say of his Highness? Tell me, or I will kill you,' she returned in the same fearful voice.
'I said what all the world knows: that the Duke Eberhard Ludwig died from lung trouble, on the 31st of October—a week ago,'—he answered angrily, struggling to remove those gripping hands from his shoulders.
'It is a lie! Another lie to torture me. Go, you lying, cruel devil—the Duke shall punish you.'
She was mad for the moment; sense, dignity, all was swept away in her terrified fury. She pushed the man from the room, her murderous hands gripping and bruising his shoulders with demoniacal force.
'Go, liar!' she cried, as she thrust the little man through the door.
She stood silent and motionless. 'He said that all the world knew,' she whispered hoarsely.
She flung herself face downwards on the stone floor of the prison-room, moaning and biting her hands like one possessed of a devil.
Duke Karl Alexander, successor to Eberhard Ludwig, was a gallant gentleman, hero of a hundred battles. He was received in Wirtemberg with popular enthusiasm, in spite of the damning fact that he was a Roman Catholic. He reassured his people by swearing to uphold the Evangelical Church. This being so, he began his reign with the entire approbation of the Wirtembergers, and in the press of business and rejoicings the trial of the Grävenitz seemed forgotten. Still, the mass of carefully prepared accusations remained, and the gentlemen of the law but bided their time.