Attempts to poison Eleanor’s food commenced not long after. She might have been an easy victim in some other courts—a court, let us say, in which she had more enemies, and in which the enemies were not all mental defectives. But poisoning was a difficult and exacting business even for persons who had never been hit on the head, and the attempts of Johann Georg and Magdalen Sybil von Röohlitz were obvious, and were failures. Eleanor took as many clothes as she could pack in a hurry, and as many servants (three) as Johann Georg would allow her, and departed without taking another meal. This was how she and Caroline had landed at the dower-house of Pretzsch. Her sojourn here had hardened into a sort of exile, or imprisonment. As she had no money of her own, there was little practical difference. She and Caroline slept in the same room and barricaded the door at night in case Johann Georg should conceive some hare-brained plan to send assassins. Caroline, despite being an abnormally acute young lady when it came to squirrels and logarithms, had no idea that any of this was happening.