After the scene of unseemly violence which followed, and after Sophia Dorothea’s recovery from a consequent illness, she made her indignant complaint to her husband’s parents. ‘Old Sophia’ censured her son, and found fault with Sophia Dorothea’s rashness. Ernest Augustus intimated that all princes had their little weaknesses, and that it was her duty to condone her husband’s. This treatment drove Sophia Dorothea to Zell; but the wrath of her husband and the intrigues of von Platen made of that residence anything but a refuge. The duke refused to give permission to his daughter to remain longer in his palace than was consistent with the limit of an ordinary visit. She petitioned most urgently, and her mother seconded her prayer with energy as warm, that for the present she might make of Zell a temporary home. Her angry father would not listen to the request of either petitioner; on the contrary, he intimated to his daughter, that if she did not return to Hanover by a stated period, she would be permanently separated from her children. On the expression of this threat, she ceased to press for leave to remain longer absent from Hanover; and when the day named for her departure arrived, she set out once more for the scene of her old miseries, anticipation of misery yet greater in her heart, and with nothing to strengthen her but a mother’s love, and to guide her but a mother’s counsel. Neither was able to save her from the ruin under which she was so soon overwhelmed. Her return had been duly announced to the Court of Hanover, and so much show of outward respect was vouchsafed her as consisted in a portion of the Electoral family repairing to the country residence of Herrnhausen to meet her on her way, and accompany her to the capital. Of this attention, however, she was unaware, or was scornfully unappreciative, and she passed Herrnhausen at as much speed as could then be shown by Electoral post-horses. It is said that her first intention was to have stopped at the country mansion, where the Electoral party was waiting to do her honour; that she was aware of the latter fact, but that she hurried on her way for the reason that she saw the Countess von Platen seated at one of the windows looking on to the road, and that, rather than encounter _her_, she offended nearly a whole family, who were more nice touching matters of etiquette than they were touching matters of morality. The members of this family, in waiting to receive a young lady, against whom they considered that they were not without grounds of complaint, were lost in a sense of horror which was farcical, and of indignation at violated proprieties which must have been as comical to look at as it no doubt was intense. The farcical nature of the scene is to be found in the fact, that these good people, by piling their agony beyond measure, made it ridiculous. There was no warrant for their horror, no cause for their indignation; and when they all returned to