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, 1852),
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