The grandfather of our George I., William, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, had seven sons, and all these were dukes, like their father. On the decease of the latter, they affected to discover that if the seven heirs, each with his little dukedom, were to marry, the greatness of the house would suffer alarming diminution. They accordingly determined that one alone of the brothers should form a legal matrimonial connection, and that the naming of the lucky re-founder of the dignity of Brunswick should be left to chance!
The seven brothers met in the hall of state in their deceased father’s mansion, and there threw dice as to who should live on in single blessedness, and which should gain the prize, not of a wife, but of permission to find one. ‘Double sixes’ were thrown by George, the sixth son. The lady whom he cavalierly wooed and readily won, was Anne Eleanore, daughter of the Landgraf of Hesse-Darmstadt.
The heir-apparent of this marriage was Frederick Ernest Augustus, who, in 1659, married Sophia, the daughter of Frederick and Elizabeth, the short-lived King and Queen of Bohemia; the latter the daughter of James I. The eldest child of this last marriage was George Louis, who ultimately became King of Great Britain.
When Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, the French Protestants who refused to be converted were executed or imprisoned. Some found safety, with suffering, in exile; and confiscation made beggars of thousands. When towns, where the Protestants were in the majority, exhibited tardiness in coming over to the king’s way of thinking, dragoons were ordered thither, and this order was of such significance, that when it was made known, the population, to escape massacre, usually professed recantation of error in a mass. This daily accession of thousands who made abjuration under the sword, and walked thence to confession and reception of the Sacrament under an implied form in which they had no faith, was described to the willingly duped king by the ultra-montane bishops as a miracle as astounding as any in Scripture.
Of some few individuals, places at court for themselves, commissions for their sons, or honours which sometimes little deserved the name, for their daughters, made, if not converts, hypocrites. Far greater was the number of the good and faithful servants who left all and followed their Master. Alexander D’Esmiers, Seigneur D’Olbreuse, a gallant Protestant gentleman of Poitou, preferred exile and loss of estate to apostacy. When he crossed the frontier, a banished man, he brought small worldly wealth with him, but therewith one child, a daughter, who was to him above all wealth; and, to uphold his dignity, the memory of being descended from the gallant Fulques D’Esmiers, the valiant and courteous Lord of Lolbroire.
Father and daughter sojourned for a time beyond the northern frontier of the kingdom, having their native country within sight. There they tabernacled in much sorrow, perplexity, and poverty, but friends ultimately supplied them with funds; and M. D’Esmiers, Seigneur D’Olbreuse, found himself in a condition to appear in Brussels without sacrifice of dignity. Into the gay circles of that gay city he led his daughter Eleanora, who was met by warm homage from the gallants, and much criticism at the hands of her intimate friends—the ladies.
The sharpest criticism could not deny her beauty; and her wit and accomplishments won for her the respect and homage of those whose allegiance was better worth having than that of mere petits maîtres with their stereotyped flattery. Eleanora, like the lady in Göthe’s tragedy, loved the society and the good opinion of wise men, while she hardly thought herself worthy of either. She was a Frenchwoman, and consequently she was not out of love with gaiety. She was the fairest and the liveliest in the train of the brilliant Duchess of Tarento, and she was following and eclipsing her noble patroness at a ball, when she was first seen by George William, second son of George, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, and heir to the pocket but sovereign dukedom of Zell.
The heir of Zell became an honest wooer. He whose gallantry had been hitherto remarkable for its dragooning tone, was now more subdued than Cymon in the subduing presence of Iphigenia. He had hated conversation, because he was incapable of sustaining it; but now love made him eloquent. He had abhorred study, and knew little of any other language than his own; but now he took to French vocabularies and dictionaries, and long before he had got so far as to ask Eleanora to hear him conjugate the verb aimer ‘to love,’ he applied to her to interpret the difficult passages he met with in books; and throughout long summer days the graceful pair might have been seen sitting together, book in hand, fully as happy and twice as hopeful as Paolo and Francesca.
George William was sorely puzzled as to his proceedings. To marriage he could have condescended with alacrity, but unfortunately there was ‘a promise in bar.’ With the view common to many co-heirs of the family, he had entered into an engagement with his brother Ernest Augustus, of Brunswick-Luneburg, and Bishop of Osnaburgh, never to marry. This concession had been purchased at a certain cost, and the end in view was the further enlargement of the dominions and influence of the House of Brunswick. If George William should not only succeed to Zell, but should leave the same to a legitimate heir, that was a case which Ernest Augustus would be disposed to look upon as a grievous wrong. A price was paid, therefore, for the promised celibacy of his brother, and that brother was now actively engaged in meditating as to how he might, without disgrace, break a promise, and yet retain the money by which it had been purchased. His heart leaped within him as he thought how easily the whole matter might be arranged by a morganatic marriage—a marriage, in other words, with the left hand; an union sanctioned by the church but so far disallowed by the law that the children of such wedlock were, in technical terms, infantes nullius, ‘children of nobody,’ and could of course succeed to nobody’s inheritance.
George William waited on the Seigneur d’Olbreuse with his morganatic offer; the poor refugee noble entertained the terms with much complacency, but left his child to determine on a point which involved such serious considerations for herself. They were accordingly placed with much respect at Eleanora’s feet, but she mused angrily thereon. She would not listen to the offer.