Hanover, following on the track of a young princess, whose contempt of ceremony tended to give them strange suspicions as to whether she possessed any remnant of virtue at all, these very serene princes and princesses were as supremely ridiculous as any of the smaller people worshipping ceremony in that never-to-be-forgotten city of Kotzebue’s painting, called Krähwinkel. When Sophia Dorothea passed by Herrnhausen, regardless of the company who awaited her there, she left the persons of a complicated drama standing in utter amazement on one of the prettiest of theatres. Herrnhausen was a name given to trim gardens, as well as to the edifice surrounded by them. At the period of which we are treating the grounds were a scene of delight; the fountains tasteful, the basins large, and the water abundant. The maze, or wilderness, was the wonder of Germany, and the orangery the pride of Europe. There was also, what may still be seen in some of the pleasure-grounds of German princes, a perfectly rustic theatre, complete in itself, with but little help from any hand but that of nature. The seats were cut out of the turf, the verdure resembled green velvet, and the chances of rheumatism must have been many. There was no roof but the sky, and the dressing-rooms of the actors were lofty bowers constructed near the stage; the whole was adorned with a profusion of gilded statues, and kept continually damp by an incessant play of spray-scattering water-works. The _grand tableau_ of rage in this locality, as Sophia Dorothea passed unheedingly by, must have been a spectacle worth the contemplating. Perhaps she had passed the more scornfully as George Louis was there, who, of all men, must at this time have been to her the most hateful. CHAPTER VIII. THE CATASTROPHE. The scheming mother foiled--Count Königsmark too garrulous in his cups--An eaves-dropper--A forged note--A mistress’s revenge--Murder of the count--The Countess Aurora Königsmark’s account of her brother’s intimacy with the princess--Horror of the princess on hearing of the count’s death--Seizure and escape of Mademoiselle von Knesebeck--A divorce mooted--The princess’s declaration of her innocence--Decision of the consistorial court--The sages of the law foiled by the princess--Condemned to captivity in the castle of Ahlden--Decision procured by bribery--Bribery universal in England--The Countess Aurora Königsmark becomes the mistress of Augustus, King of Poland--Her unsuccessful mission to Charles XII.--Exemplary conduct in her latter years--Becomes prioress of the nunnery of Quedlinburg.