Accordingly, at midnight the coffin was dragged from under the sand, hoisted into a suitable vehicle, and it was unceremoniously jolted over the rough roads till it reached the chief church in the old ducal city of Zell. The necessary workpeople were ready. They carried the plain leaden coffin down to the vault below, and without any circumstance of prayer or outward respect, they cast it into a corner; and there it still lies, without even a name on the rough lead to indicate whose sad burthen of life is deposited within. Her royal husband in England simply notified in the _London Gazette_ that a Duchess of Ahlden had died at her residence on the date above named; but he did not add that he had thereby lost a wife, or his children lost a mother. No intimation was given of the relationship she held towards him or them. The quality of his affection was illustrated by his explosion of rage when he heard that his daughter, with the Court of Prussia, had gone into mourning for the death of her mother. The husband of Sophia Dorothea became of gayer humour than usual after her death. After receiving intelligence of that event, the royal widower went to see the Italian comedians in the Haymarket act ‘Il Mercante Prodigo,’ or ‘Harlequin Prodigal Merchant.’ He liked this sort of entertainment so well, that, a few nights later, he commanded the performance of ‘Pantalone, Barone di Sloffenburgo,’ at the King’s Theatre. On Christmas Eve, the newspapers recorded the fact that Prince Waldeck (who had come over with despatches in November) had taken leave of his Majesty and had returned to Hanover. Therewith seemed to have come the end of a long, and dark, and mournful history. In the list of the persons of note and distinction in Great Britain and Ireland, and of the Foreign Princes who died in the year 1726--published in the _Daily Post_ in January 1727, no record was made of the demise of Sophia Dorothea. On the other hand, there is an entry of a bereavement by which her husband, the King, had been afflicted, in the same mouth of November, namely, in the death of ‘Mr. Mahomet, _valet de chambre_ to his Majesty.’ A story was current that Sophia Dorothea, on her death-bed, had summoned her husband, the King, to meet her at the great judgment seat of Heaven within a year. This summons was conveyed in a letter addressed by her to him, but it was not delivered to the King till after he had, in nervous restlessness, set out for Hanover. On the night of the 2nd of June 1727, little Horace Walpole, then ten years old, was conducted by the King’s illegitimate daughter, Petronilla Melusina (Lady Walsingham) to the King himself, to kiss the royal hand as his Majesty passed on his way to sup (for the last time, as it proved) with Petronilla’s mother (the former von der Schulenburg, now Duchess of Kendal) the King’s old mistress. This presentation had been accorded to the prayer of the first minister’s wife, Horace Walpole’s mother.