第11章

Uncle George again, " Kurprinz Georg Ludwig"(Electoral Prince and Heir-Apparent), who became George I. of England; he, always a taciturn, saturnine, somewhat grim-visaged man, not without thoughts of his own but mostly inarticulate thoughts, was, just at this time, in a deep domestic intricacy.

Uncle George the Kurprinz was painfully detecting, in these very months, that his august Spouse and cousin, a brilliant not uninjured lady, had become an indignant injuring one; that she had gone, and was going, far astray in her walk of life! Thus all is not radiance at Hanover either, Ninth Elector though we are;but, in the soft sunlight, there quivers a streak of the blackness of very Erebus withal. Kurprinz George, I think, though he too is said to have been good to the boy, could not take much interest in this burly Nephew of his just now!

Sure enough, it was in this year 1693, that the famed Konigsmark tragedy came ripening fast towards a crisis in Hanover; and next year the catastrophe arrived. A most tragic business; of which the little Boy, now here, will know more one day. Perhaps it was on this very visit, on one visit it credibly was, that Sophie Charlotte witnessed a sad scene in the Schloss of Hanover high words rising, where low cooings had been more appropriate;harsh words, mutually recriminative, rising ever higher; ending, it is thought, in THINGS, or menaces and motions towards things (actual box on the ear, some call it),--never to be forgotten or forgiven! And on Sunday 1st of July, 1694, Colonel Count Philip Konigsmark, Colonel in the Hanover Dragoons, was seen for the last time in this world. From that date, he has vanished suddenly underground, in an inscrutable manner: never more shall the light of the sun, or any human eye behold that handsome blackguard man.

Not for a hundred and fifty years shall human creatures know, or guess with the smallest certainty, what has become of him.

And shortly after Konigsmark's disappearance, there is this sad phenomenon visible: A once very radiant Princess (witty, haughty-minded, beautiful, not wise or fortunate) now gone all ablaze into angry tragic conflagration; getting locked into the old Castle of Ahlden, in the moory solitudes of Luneburg Heath: to stay there till she die,--thirty years as it proved,--and go into ashes and angry darkness as she may. Old peasants, late in the next century, will remember that they used to see her sometimes driving on the Heath,--beautiful lady, long black hair, and the glitter of diamonds in it; sometimes the reins in her own hand, but always with a party of cavalry round her, and their swords drawn.

[ Die Herzogin von Ahlden (Leipzig, l852), p. 22. Divorce was, 28th December, 1694; death, 13th November, 1726,--age then 60.] "Duchess of Ahlden," that was her title in the eclipsed state. Born Princess of Zelle; by marriage, Princess of Hanover ( Kurprinzessin ); would have been Queen of England, too, had matters gone otherwise than they did.--Her name, like that of a little Daughter she had, is Sophie Dorothee: she is Cousin and Divorced Wife of Kurprinz George;divorced, and as it were abolished alive, in this manner. She is little Friedrich Wilhelm's Aunt-in-law; and her little Daughter comes to be his Wife in process of time. Of him, or of those belonging to him, she took small notice, I suppose, in her then mood, the crisis coming on so fast. In her happier innocent days she had two children, a King that is to be, and a Queen;George II. of England, Sophie Dorothee of Prussia; but must not now call them hers, or ever see them again.

This was the Konigsmark tragedy at Hanover; fast ripening towards its catastrophe while little Friedrich Wilhelm was there. It has been, ever since, a rumor and dubious frightful mystery to mankind: but within these few years, by curious accidents (thefts, discoveries of written documents, in various countries, and diligent study of them), it has at length become a certainty and clear fact, to those who are curious about it. Fact surely of a rather horrible sort;--yet better, I must say, than was suspected:

not quite so bad in the state of fact as in that of rumor.