merited censure, the last man who should have stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the reputation of his consort was that George Louis, whose affected indignation was expressed from a couch with Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg at his side, and their very old-fashioned (as to look, but not less illegitimate as to fact) baby, playing, in much unconsciousness of her future distinction, between them. It was because Sophia Dorothea had not been altogether tamely silent touching her own wrongs, that she had found enemies trumpet-tongued publishing a forged record of her transgressions. When Count von Moltke had become implicated in the little domestic rebellion of Prince Maximilian, some intimation was conveyed to him that, if he would contrive, in his defence, to mingle the name of Sophia Dorothea in the details of the trumpery conspiracy, so as to attach suspicion to such name, his own acquittal would be secured. The count was a gallant man, refused to injure an unoffending lady, and was beheaded; as though he had conspired to overthrow a state, instead of having tried to help a discontented heir in the disputed settlement of some family accounts. The contempt of Sophia Dorothea, on discovering to what lengths the intimacy of George Louis and Ermengarda von der Schulenburg had gone, found bitter and eloquent expression. Where an angry contest was to be maintained, George Louis could be eloquent too; and in these domestic quarrels, not only is he said to have been as coarse as any of his own grooms, but, at least on one occasion, to have proceeded to blows. His hand was on her throat, and the wife and mother of a King of England would have been strangled by her exasperated lord, had it not been for the intervention of the courtiers, who rushed in, and, presumedly, prevented murder. To such a story wide currency was given; and, if not exact to the letter, neither can it be said to be without foundation. The circumstances which led Sophia Dorothea to formally complain of the treatment she experienced at her husband’s hands were these. One evening, after being one of a group in the open air, witnessing an eclipse of the moon, and listening to Leibnitz’s explanations, Sophia Dorothea (attended by Fräulein Knesebeck and Madame Sassdorf) returned towards the castle. The ladies missed their way in the dark, but they found themselves at last at the door of a newly-erected building, which Sophia Dorothea entered, despite Frau Sassdorf’s entreaties to the contrary. She equally disregarded the same lady’s urgent entreaties not to enter a room at the end of the ante-chamber where the ladies were standing together. Sophia Dorothea opened the door of the room, and there beheld Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg on a couch; one hand in that of George Louis, who with the other was rocking a sleeping baby (the future Countess of Chesterfield) in a cradle.