In the meantime, during an adjournment of the court, she withdrew to Lauenau. She was prohibited from repairing to Zell, but there was no longer any opposition made to her leaving the capital of the Electorate. She was, however, strictly prohibited from taking her children with her. Her parting from these was as painful a scene as can well be imagined, for she is said to have felt that she would never again be united with them. Her son, George Augustus, was then ten years of age; her daughter, Sophia, was still younger. The homage of these children was rendered to their mother long after their hearts had ceased to pay any to their father beyond a mere conventional respect. In her temporary retirement at Lauenau, she was permitted to enjoy very little repose. The friends of the Electoral Prince seem to have been anxious lest she should publish more than was yet known of the details of his private life. This fear alone can account for their anxiety, or professed anxiety, for a reconciliation. The lawyers, singly or in couples, and now and then a leash of them together, went down to Lauenau to hold conference with her. They assailed her socially, scripturally, legally; they pointed out how salubrious was the discipline which subjected a wife to confess her faults. They read to her whole chapters from Corinthians, on the duties of married ladies, and asked her if she could be so obstinate and unorthodox as to disregard the injunctions of St. Paul. Finally, they quoted codes and pandects, to prove that a sentence might be pronounced against her under contumacy, and concluded by recommending her to trust to the mercy of the Crown Prince, if she would but cast herself upon his honour. They were grave men; sage, learned, experienced men; crafty, cunning, far-seeing men; in all the circles of the empire men were not to be found more skilled in surmounting difficulties than these indefatigable men, who were all foiled by the simplicity and firmness of a mere child. ‘If I am guilty,’ said she, ‘I am unworthy of the prince: if I am innocent, he is unworthy of me!’ Here was a conclusion with which she utterly confounded the sages. They could not gainsay it, nor refute the logic by which it was arrived at, and which gave it force. They were ‘perplexed in the extreme,’ but neither social experience, nor scriptural reading, nor legal knowledge afforded them weapons wherewith to beat down the simple defences behind which the princess had entrenched herself. They tried repeatedly, but tried in vain. At the end of every trial she slowly and calmly enunciated the same reply:--‘If I am guilty I am unworthy of him: if I am innocent, he is unworthy of me!’