As the princess not merely insisted upon quitting Hanover, but firmly refused to acknowledge that she had been guilty of any wrong to her most guilty husband, a course was adopted by her enemies which, they considered, would not merely punish her, but would transfer her possessions to her consort, without affecting the long projected union of Zell, after the duke’s death, with the territory of Hanover. An accusation of adultery, even if it could be sustained, of which there was not the shadow of a chance, might, if carried out and followed by a divorce, in some way affect the transfer of a dominion to Hanover, which transfer rested partly on the rights of the wife of the Electoral Prince. A divorce might destroy the ex-husband’s claims; but he was well-provided with lawyers to watch and guard the case to an ultimate conclusion in his favour. A Consistorial Court was formed, of a strangely mixed character, for it consisted of four ecclesiastical lawyers and four civil authorities of Hanover and Zell. It had no other authority to warrant its proceedings than the command or sanction of the Elector, and the consent of the Duke of Zell, whose ill-feeling towards his child seemed to increase daily. The only charge laid against the princess before this anomalous court was one of incompatibility of temper, added to some little failings of character; not the most distant allusion to serious guilt with Königsmark, or any one else, was made. His name was never once mentioned. Her consent to live again in Hanover and let by-gones be by-gones was indignantly refused by her. She would never, she protested, live again among people who had murdered the only man in the world who loved her well enough to be a friend to her who was otherwise friendless. Her passionate tears flowed abundantly; Fräulein von Knesebeck states that whenever the mysterious fate of Königsmark was referred to, the princess’s grief was so violent that it might almost lead those who witnessed it to suspect that she took too great an interest in the man made away with almost at her chamber-door. The court affected to attempt an adjustment of the matter; but as the attempt was always based on another to drag from the princess a confession of her having, wittingly or unwittingly, given cause of offence to her husband, she continued firmly to refuse to place her consort in the right by doing herself and her cause extremest wrong.