“They had me against the wall with a bare blade at my breast, and I never moved,” added the Countess. “They had him down–then she came in, the spy, the traitress. ‘Eh, Königsmarck,’ she said (how she had always hated you!), and she set her heel on his mouth as he writhed—”
“And I cursed her,” whispered Sophia Dorothea, “and I cursed him and the children I had borne him—”
“Ay, you cursed; but they picked him up and—”
“Stop!” shrieked the Princess. “Have I not lived with that all these years? He was dead.”
“I hope he was dead,” said the Countess; “but the Elector hoped he was alive when the oven door was shut. What did she say? ‘This is not the couch my lord looked for to-night. Your oven takes dainty meat, Serenity!’”
“I bit his thumb to the bone,” answered the Princess, clutching the edge of the mantelshelf. “Oh, Jesus, Jesus!”
“Why should the High God hear you?” sneered the old woman.
“I have lain awake at night remembering that I hurt him. He cried out under his breath, and there was blood on his lace—”
“And he struck you in the face as the others stepped back from the fire and gave you a vile name—”
“It was the last word he ever spoke to me.”