[Transcriber's note:
Bagatelle: Something of little value or significance.]
The Mysterious Letter.
The king prepared for another journey to Hanover. Some months before, on the 12th of November, 1726, his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Zell, died. She was beautiful and amiable, but arbitrarily condemned by her husband during thirty-six years. The Count of Konigsmark, the man who had, it was said, gained her favors, disappeared mysteriously at the time when the princess was imprisoned, by the order of her father-in-law as well as her husband. The place where the Count was struck down is still shown. Many years later his bones were found under the marble slab before the chimney of the castle. The prince obtained a divorce, but never relaxed his severity towards his wife, who, on her part, never ceased protesting her innocence.
It is said that at the time when King George I. entered Germany, in June, 1727, an unknown person threw into his carriage a letter from the princess, written during her last illness, solemnly adjuring her husband to repent of the terrible injury which he had inflicted upon her, and calling upon him to appear within a year before the tribunal of God.
It was to this summons from the tomb that was attributed that unexpected blow which so suddenly fell upon King George. On the 10th of June, 1727, he departed from Delden in good health, but within a few hours was struck by apoplexy. His servants desired to stop, but the king repeated, in a stifled voice, "Osnabruch! Osnabruch!" When they gained that palace of the prince Bishop, his brother, the King of England was dead.
Chapter XXXV.
George II (1727-1760).
It is the honor and the good fortune of free countries to be often served, and at times gloriously governed, without display and without the personal grandeur of the sovereign called to the throne by the law of heredity. Already slowly undermined by the misdeeds and misfortunes of King Louis XIV.'s last years, absolute power was enfeebled and dishonored in France, in the indolent and corrupt hands of Louis XV. In Europe, in Asia, in America, war was about to deal it a mortal blow, by despoiling our country of that military glory which had for long been our appanage, despite the crimes and errors of our home government. Honest and well disposed toward his counsellors and his people, without cunning and without breadth of view, constantly pre-occupied with the German interests of his Electorate, George II. was about to assure to England a long period of security and prosperity, sometimes brilliant, always fatal to his enemies at home and to his rivals abroad, to the house of Stuart as to France.