Now one would suppose that the wife of the elector might have interfered to prevent such harsh treatment; but she was too much occupied with her studies to take interest in such matters, and even if she had, she would have found how much greater was Madame von Platen's power than her own. {036}So poor Use found herself outside the city walls, penniless, disgraced, friendless. She wandered through the country until, footsore and hungry, she arrived at the palace of Zell, where, upon being admitted, she frankly related her troubles to the duchess. That lady's sympathy was at once aroused, and although she told the giddy girl that she had done wrong, she could not but own to herself that the punishment for so slight an offence had been very heavy. Therefore, after due consideration and a short consultation with her husband, she gave the girl an asylum and employment in her household. This was the head and front of the Duchess of Zell's offending, so far as Madame von Platen was concerned, and this was the insult that she resolved to revenge on the head of poor Sophia Dorothea. [[A.D. 1686.]] George Louis had for a long time been encouraged in his ill-treatment of his wife, not only by the vile Madame von Platen, but by her equally vile sister, Madame von Busche, of whom we have not spoken since her marriage. Her husband had died meanwhile, and it was on the occasion of her second marriage with General Wreyke that the two sisters had arranged to complete the unhappiness of Sophia Dorothea. Previously they had invited a certain young lady to their fêtes, and presented her to George Louis, with the understanding that she was to captivate him, and as she had not much wit but a great deal of shrewdness and some skill as a flatterer, there was little doubt that she would succeed. This girl was so tall that she was called the "Maypole," and she had a very long name--it was Ermengarda Melusina von Schulem-berg. She courted and cajoled George Louis until he really began to believe that he could not exist without her. It was a curious state of morals when a prince could unite himself by what was called a left-hand marriage to {037}two or three women after he had one wife, as if it could possibly make any actual difference on which hand the wedding-ring was placed. Yet, so it was with George Louis, who was just on the eve of contracting a left-hand marriage with Ermengarda, when Madame von Busche celebrated her second nuptials. This ceremony took place at the house of her sister, Madame von Platen; Sophia Dorothea was invited, and it was all arranged that as soon as she entered the drawing-room, George Louis was to open the ball with Ermengarda, whose intimacy was to be made so clear to the injured wife that she could not misunderstand.