This treatment drove Sophia Dorothea to Zell; but the wrath of her husband and the intrigues of von Platen made of that residence anything but a refuge. The duke refused to give permission to his daughter to remain longer in his palace than was consistent with the limit of an ordinary visit. She petitioned most urgently, and her mother seconded her prayer with energy as warm, that for the present she might make of Zell a temporary home. Her angry father would not listen to the request of either petitioner; on the contrary, he intimated to his daughter, that if she did not return to Hanover by a stated period, she would be permanently separated from her children. On the expression of this threat, she ceased to press for leave to remain longer absent from Hanover; and when the day named for her departure arrived, she set out once more for the scene of her old miseries, anticipation of misery yet greater in her heart, and with nothing to strengthen her but a mother’s love, and to guide her but a mother’s counsel. Neither was able to save her from the ruin under which she was so soon overwhelmed.
Her return had been duly announced to the Court of Hanover, and so much show of outward respect was vouchsafed her as consisted in a portion of the Electoral family repairing to the country residence of Herrnhausen to meet her on her way, and accompany her to the capital. Of this attention, however, she was unaware, or was scornfully unappreciative, and she passed Herrnhausen at as much speed as could then be shown by Electoral post-horses. It is said that her first intention was to have stopped at the country mansion, where the Electoral party was waiting to do her honour; that she was aware of the latter fact, but that she hurried on her way for the reason that she saw the Countess von Platen seated at one of the windows looking on to the road, and that, rather than encounter her, she offended nearly a whole family, who were more nice touching matters of etiquette than they were touching matters of morality. The members of this family, in waiting to receive a young lady, against whom they considered that they were not without grounds of complaint, were lost in a sense of horror which was farcical, and of indignation at violated proprieties which must have been as comical to look at as it no doubt was intense. The farcical nature of the scene is to be found in the fact, that these good people, by piling their agony beyond measure, made it ridiculous. There was no warrant for their horror, no cause for their indignation; and when they all returned to Hanover, following on the track of a young princess, whose contempt of ceremony tended to give them strange suspicions as to whether she possessed any remnant of virtue at all, these very serene princes and princesses were as supremely ridiculous as any of the smaller people worshipping ceremony in that never-to-be-forgotten city of Kotzebue’s painting, called Krähwinkel.
When Sophia Dorothea passed by Herrnhausen, regardless of the company who awaited her there, she left the persons of a complicated drama standing in utter amazement on one of the prettiest of theatres. Herrnhausen was a name given to trim gardens, as well as to the edifice surrounded by them. At the period of which we are treating the grounds were a scene of delight; the fountains tasteful, the basins large, and the water abundant. The maze, or wilderness, was the wonder of Germany, and the orangery the pride of Europe. There was also, what may still be seen in some of the pleasure-grounds of German princes, a perfectly rustic theatre, complete in itself, with but little help from any hand but that of nature. The seats were cut out of the turf, the verdure resembled green velvet, and the chances of rheumatism must have been many. There was no roof but the sky, and the dressing-rooms of the actors were lofty bowers constructed near the stage; the whole was adorned with a profusion of gilded statues, and kept continually damp by an incessant play of spray-scattering water-works. The grand tableau of rage in this locality, as Sophia Dorothea passed unheedingly by, must have been a spectacle worth the contemplating. Perhaps she had passed the more scornfully as George Louis was there, who, of all men, must at this time have been to her the most hateful.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CATASTROPHE.
The scheming mother foiled—Count Königsmark too garrulous in his cups—An eaves-dropper—A forged note—A mistress’s revenge—Murder of the count—The Countess Aurora Königsmark’s account of her brother’s intimacy with the princess—Horror of the princess on hearing of the count’s death—Seizure and escape of Mademoiselle von Knesebeck—A divorce mooted—The princess’s declaration of her innocence—Decision of the consistorial court—The sages of the law foiled by the princess—Condemned to captivity in the castle of Ahlden—Decision procured by bribery—Bribery universal in England—The Countess Aurora Königsmark becomes the mistress of Augustus, King of Poland—Her unsuccessful mission to Charles XII.—Exemplary conduct in her latter years—Becomes prioress of the nunnery of Quedlinburg.
With the return of Sophia Dorothea to Hanover, her enemies appear to have commenced more actively their operations against her. George Louis was languidly amusing himself with Ermengarda von der Schulenburg and their little daughter Petronilla Melusina. The Countess von Platen was in a state of irritability at the presence of Sophia Dorothea and the absence of Königsmark. The last-mentioned person had, in his wide-spread adoration, offered a portion of his homage to both the countess and her daughter. The elder lady, while accepting as much of the incense for herself as was safe to inhale, endeavoured to secure the count as a husband for her daughter. Her failure only increased her bitterness against the count, and by no means lent less asperity to the sentiment with which she viewed Sophia Dorothea. She was, no doubt, the chief cause, primarily and approximate, of the ruin which fell upon both.
It was not merely the absence of Königsmark, who was on a visit to the riotous court of Augustus of Saxony, which had scared her spirit; the reports which were made to her of his conversation there gave fierceness to her resentment, and called into existence that desire of vengeance which she accomplished, but without profiting by the wickedness.
There was no more welcome guest at Dresden than Königsmark. An individual, so gallant of bearing, handsome of feature, easy of principle, and lively of speech, was sure to be warmly welcomed at that dissolute court. He played deeply, and whatever sums he might lose, he never lost his temper. He drank as deeply as he played, and he then became as loquacious as Cassio, but more given to slander. He spoke ill of others out of mere thoughtlessness, or at times out of mere vanity. He possessed not what Swift calls the ‘lower prudence’ of discretion. His vanity, and the stories to which it prompted him, seemed to amuse and interest the idle and scandalous court where he was so welcome a guest.
He kept the illustriously wicked company there in an uninterrupted ecstacy by the tales he told, and the point he gave to them, of the chief personages of the Court of Hanover. He retailed anecdotes of the Elector and his son, George Louis, and warmly-tinted stories of the shameless mistresses of that exemplary parent, and no less exemplary child. He did not spare even the Electress Sophia; but she was, after all, too respectable for Königsmark to be able to make of her a subject of ridicule. This subject he found in ladies of smaller virtue and less merit generally. But every word he uttered, in sarcastic description of the life, character, and behaviour of the favourites of the Elector of Hanover and his son, found its way, with no loss of pungency on the road, to the ears of those persons whom the report was most likely to offend. His warm advocacy of Sophia Dorothea, expressed at the table of Augustus of Saxony, was only an additional offence; and George Louis was taught to think that Count Königsmark had no right to ask, with Pierre, ‘May not a man wish his friend’s wife well, and no harm done?’
The count returned to Hanover soon after Sophia Dorothea had arrived there, subsequent to her painful visit to the little court of her ducal parents at Zell. Königsmark, who had entered the Saxon service, returned to Hanover to complete the form of withdrawal from service in the Hanoverian army. It is alleged that Sophia Dorothea, otherwise friendless, entreated him to procure her an asylum, or to protect her in her flight to the court of her kinsman, Duke Anton Ulrich, at Wolfenbüttel. The duke is reported to have been willing to receive her. Other reports state that the princess was more than willing to fly with Königsmark to Paris! Out of all such rumours there is this certainty, that on Sunday, the 1st of July 1694 (George Louis being then in Berlin), Königsmark found a letter in pencil on a table in the sitting-room of his house in Hanover. It was to this effect: ‘To-night, after ten o’clock, the Princess Sophia Dorothea will expect Count Königsmark.’ He recognised the hand of the princess. All that afternoon he was busy writing. His secretary and servants thought his manner strange. He went out soon after ten, unattended. He was in a light, simple, summer-dress. He went on his way to the palace, crossed the threshold, and never was seen outside it again.