In the closing days of her illness, so runs the story, she gave into the hands of some one whom she could trust, a letter addressed to her husband, and obtained a promise that the letter should, somehow or other, be delivered to George himself. This letter contained a final declaration that she was absolutely guiltless of the offence alleged against her, a bitter reproach to George for his ruthless conduct, {268} and a solemn summons to him to stand by her side before the judgment-seat of Heaven within a year, and there make answer in her presence for the wrongs he had done her, for her blighted life and her miserable death. There was no way of getting this letter into George's hands while the King was in England, but an arrangement was made by means of which it was put into his coach when he crossed the frontier of Germany on his way towards his capital. George, it is said, opened the letter at once, and was so surprised and horror-stricken by its stern summons that he fell that moment into the apoplectic fit from which he never recovered. Sophia, therefore, had herself accomplished her own revenge; her reproach had killed the King; her summons brought him at once within the ban of that judgment to which she had called him. It would be well if one could believe the story; there would seem a dramatic justice--a tragic retribution--about it. Its very terror would dignify the story of a life that, on the whole, was commonplace and vulgar. But, for ourselves, we confess that we cannot believe in the mysterious letter, the fatal summons, the sudden fulfilment. There are too many stories of the kind floating about history to allow us to attach any special significance to this particular tale. We doubt even whether, if the letter had been written, it would have greatly impressed the mind of George. Remorse for the treatment of his wife he could not have felt--he was incapable of any such emotion; and we question whether any appeal to the sentiment of the supernatural, any summons to another and an impalpable world, would have made much impression on that stolid, prosaic intelligence and that heart of lead. Besides, according to some versions of the tale, it was not, after all, a letter from his wife which impressed him, but only the warning of a fortune-teller--a woman who admonished the King to be careful of the life of his imprisoned consort, because it was fated for him that he should not survive her a year. This story, too, is told of many kings and other persons less illustrious. {269} [Sidenote: 1727--Character of the first George]