The salient points of Sophie Charlotte’s character now made themselves manifest. The Court of Berlin was a brilliant one, and modelled on that of the King of France, for the King of Prussia refused to dispense with any detail of pomp or ceremony, holding, like the Grand Monarque, that a splendid and stately court was the outward and visible sign of a prince’s power and greatness. He had a passion for display, and would spend hours debating the most trivial points of court etiquette. This was weariness of the soul to the Queen, for she cared nothing for the pomp and circumstance of sovereignty. She was careful to discharge her ceremonial duties, but she did so in the spirit of magnificent indifference. “Leibniz talked to me to-day of the infinitely little,” she wrote once to her friend and confidante, Marie von Pöllnitz. “_Mon Dieu_, as if I did not know enough about that.” The young Queen had arrived at a great position, but her heart was empty; she tolerated her husband, but she felt towards him nothing warmer than a half-contemptuous liking. The King, on his part, was proud of his beautiful and talented consort, though he was rather afraid of her. It would have been easy for Sophie Charlotte, had she been so minded, to have gained great influence over her husband, and to have governed Brandenburg and Prussia through him, but though her intellect was masculine in its calibre, unlike her mother, she had no love of domination, and cared not to meddle with affairs of state. These things were to her but vanity, and she preferred rather to live a life of intellectual contemplation and philosophic calm; the scientific discoveries of Newton were more to her than kingdoms, and the latest theory of Leibniz than all the pomp and circumstance of the court.