There was nothing remarkable in the fact that he speedily attracted the notice of Sophia Dorothea. She may, without fault, have remembered with pleasure the companion of her romping youth; and have ‘wished him well and no harm done,’ as Pierre says. He was not a mere stranger; and the two met, just as the husband of Sophia Dorothea had publicly insulted her by ostentatiously parading his attachment and his bad taste for women, no more to be compared with her in worth and virtue than Lais with Lucretia. Up to this time, the only confidantes of her secret sorrows were her mother and her faithful von Knesebeck. She had repulsed the affected sympathy of the Countess von Platen; and had concealed her feelings, when her jealousy was stirred by allusions to the countess’s sister and to Ermengarda von der Schulenburg. The Countess von Platen, mature of age, cast admiring eyes on Königsmark. It is asserted, that the count had scarcely been made Colonel of the Guards when the Countess von Platen fixed upon him as one of the instruments by which she would ruin Sophia Dorothea, and relieve George Louis of a wife whose virtues were a continual reproach to him. The princess had been taking some exercise in the gardens of the palace, returning from which she met her little son, George Augustus, whom she took from his attendant, and with him in her arms began to ascend the stairs which led to her apartments. Her good will was greater than her strength, and Count Königsmark happened to see her at the moment when she was exhibiting symptoms of weakness and irresolution, embarrassed by her burthen, and not knowing how to proceed with it. The count at once, with ready gallantry, not merely proffered, but gave his aid. He took the young prince from his mother, ascended the stairs, holding the future King of England in his arms, and at the door of the apartment of Sophia Dorothea again consigned him to maternal keeping. They tarried for a few brief moments at the door, exchanging a few conventional terms of thanks and civility, when they were seen by the ubiquitous von Platen, and out of this simple fact she is supposed to have gradually worked the subsequent terrible calamity which may be said to have slain both victims, for Sophia Dorothea was only for years slowly accomplishing death, which fell upon the cavalier so surely and so swiftly. This incident was reported to Ernest Augustus (Mon Sieur, as the countess used to call him) with much exaggeration of detail, and liberal suggestion not warranted by the facts. The conduct of the princess was mildly censured as indiscretion, that of the count as disloyal impertinence; and, thereto, a mountain of comment seems to have been added, and a misty world of hints, which annoyed the duke without convincing him.