The singularity vanishes when we find that around this encaged duchess there circled a really extensive household, and there lived a world of ceremony, of which no one was so much the slave as she was. Her captivity in its commencement was decked with a certain sort of splendour, about which _she_, who was its object, cared by far the least. There was a military governor of the castle, gentlemen and ladies in waiting--spies all. Among the honester servants of the house were a brace of pages and as many valets, a dozen female domestics, and fourteen footmen, who had to undergo the intense labour of doing very little in a very lengthened space of time. To supply the material wants of these, the three cooks, one confectioner, a baker, and a butler, were provided. There was, besides, a military force, consisting of infantry and artillery. Altogether, there must have been work enough for the three cooks. The forms of a court were long maintained, although only on a small scale. The duchess held her little levées, and the local authorities, clergy, and neighbouring nobility and gentry offered her such respect as could be manifested by paying her visits on certain appointed days. These visits, however, were always narrowly watched by the officials, whose office lay in such service and was hid beneath a show of duty. The successive governors of the castle were men of note, and their presence betokened the importance attached to the person and safe keeping of the captive. During the first three years of her imprisonment, the post of governor was held by the Hof Grand-Marshal von Bothmar. He was succeeded by the Count Bergest, who enjoyed his equivocal dignity of gaoler-governor about a quarter of a century. During the concluding years of the imprisonment of Sophia, her seneschal was a relative of one of her judges, Georg von Busche. These men behaved to their prisoner with as much courtesy as they dared to show; nor was her captivity severe in anything but the actual deprivation of liberty, and of all intercourse with those she best loved, until after the first few years. The escape of Fräulein Knesebeck from her place of confinement appears to have given the husband of Sophia Dorothea an affectionate uneasiness, which he evidenced by giving orders that his wife’s safe-keeping should be maintained with greater stringency.