While this discussion was proceeding, the Countess von Platen was by no means idle. She had watched the count to the bower into which she had sent him by the employment of a false lure, and she thereupon hastened to the Elector to communicate what she termed her discovery. Ernest Augustus, albeit waxing old, was by no means infirm of judgment. If Königsmark was then in the chamber of his daughter-in-law, he refused to see in the fact anything more serious than its own impropriety. _That_, however, was crime enough to warrant the arrest which the countess solicited. The old Elector yielded to all she asked, except credence of her assurance that Sophia Dorothea must be as guilty as Königsmark was presuming. He would consent to nothing further than the arrest of him who was guilty of the presumption; and the method of this arrest he left to the conduct of the countess, who urgently solicited it as a favour, and with solicitation of such earnestness that the old Elector affected to be jealous of the interest she took in such a case, and added playfully the expression of his opinion, that, angry as she seemed to be with the count, he was too handsome a man to be likely to meet with ill-treatment at her hands. Armed with this permission, she proceeded to the body of soldiers or watch for the night, and exhibiting her written warrant for what she demanded, requested that a guard might be given to her, for a purpose which she would explain to them. Some four or five men of this household body were told off, and these were conducted by her to a large apartment, called the Hall of Knights, through which Königsmark must pass, as he had not yet quitted the princess’s chamber. They were then informed that their office was to arrest a criminal, whose person was described to them, of whose safe custody the Elector was so desirous that he would rather that such criminal should be slain than that he should escape. They were accordingly instructed to use their weapons if he should resist; and as their courage had been heightened by the double bribe of much wine and a shower of gold pieces, they expressed their willingness to execute her bidding, and only too well showed by their subsequent act the sincerity of their expression.