‘Ah!’ exclaimed the very apostolic bishop to the dissolute disciples at his court, on the night that the family compact was made an accomplished fact, ‘my brother’s French _Madame_ is not a jot the more his wife for being duchess’--which was true, for married is married, and there is no comparative degree of intensity which can be applied to the circumstance. ‘But she has a dignity the more, and therewith may _Madame_ rest content’--which was not true, for no new title could add dignity to a woman like the wife of Duke George William. When Sophia Dorothea was but seven years old, she had for an occasional playfellow in the galleries and gardens of Zell and Calenberg, a handsome lad, Swedish by birth, but German by descent, whose name was Philip Christopher von Königsmark. He was a few years older than Sophia Dorothea (some accounts say ten years older), and he was in Zell for the purpose of education, and he fulfilled the office of page. Many of his vacation hours were spent with the child of George William, who was his father’s friend. When gossips saw the two handsome children, buoyant of spirit, beaming with health, and ignorant of care, playing hand in hand at sports natural to their age, those gossips prophesied of future marriage. But their speculation had soon no food whereon to live, for the young Königsmark was speedily withdrawn from Zell, and Sophia bloomed on alone, or with other companions, good, graceful, fair, accomplished, and supremely happy. But, even daughter as she was of a left-handed marriage, there was hanging to her name a dower sufficiently costly to dazzle and allure even princely suitors. To one of these she was betrothed before she was ten years old. The suitor was a soldier and a prince. Augustus Frederick, Crown Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was allured by the ‘beaux yeux de la casette’ of the little heiress, which contained, after all, only one hundred thousand thalers, fifteen thousand pounds sterling; but an humble dower for a duke’s only daughter. In the meantime the affianced lover had to prove himself, by force of arms, worthy of his lady and her fortune. To the siege of Philipsburg, in the year 1676, repaired the chivalrous Augustus of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. He bore himself with a dignity and daring which entitled him to respect, but a fatal bullet slew him suddenly: a brief notice in a despatch was his soldierly requiem, and when the affianced child-bride was solemnly informed by circumstance of Hof-Marshal that her lord was slain and her heart was free, she was too young to be sorry, and too unconscious to be glad.