For a while Sophia Dorothea had exulted in the prospect of one day being Queen of the second nation in the world.
She bloomed gloriously; her husband was openly unfaithful to her. The little court was coarse and sordid and scandalous, but she had the power of extracting pleasure from her life, of throwing the glamour of youth and health over everything. She was frivolous, bold–never sufficiently moved to be indiscreet, though she sailed near to danger many times.
Then, when she had been married thirteen years, she met Philip, Count von Königsmarck.
After that her life had ended as regarded all those things that made it pleasant, even endurable.
Schloss Ahlden had closed on her youth, her beauty, her high spirits, her courage. Her hot passions had flared and wasted and waned without a vent for thirty-two years, and now she was an old woman, almost passive.
Almost, not quite. At times her servants were afraid of her; at times she was like a tigress enraged.
Even after a lifetime of imprisonment, the passionate spirit at times still ranged and surged against its bonds.
Once she had had a desperate desire to pass, if only once, the turnpike on the Hayden road that marked the limit of her drive.
She would drive the cabriolet herself, drive furiously as if endeavouring to outstrip the guards who always galloped alongside. But no matter how she drove, always at the turnpike she must turn back. Of late she had not been out at all; she spent her days glooming at the window. Her women had been recently changed; only one remained, who had been with her all the time, and she was very old now and sour with long exile from her kind.