Here indeed was a rebuff such as Augustus was little prepared for, or accustomed to. The beauty, of whom he had hoped to make an easy conquest, was an iceberg whom all his ardour could not thaw. He was in despair. "I am sure she hates and despises me, while I love her dearer than life itself," he confessed to his favourite Beuchling, who vainly tried to console and cheer him. He confided his passion and his pain to Aurora's sister, whose hopeful words were alike powerless to dispel his gloom. When Aurora held aloof from him, he sent letter after letter of passionate pleading to her by the hand of the trusty Beuchling. "If you knew the tortures I am suffering," he wrote, "your kindness of heart could not resist pitying me. I was mad to declare my passion so brutally to you. Let me expiate my fault, prostrate at your feet; and, if you wish for my death, let me at least receive my sentence from your own sweet lips." To such a desperate state was Augustus brought within a few days of setting eyes on his new divinity! As for Aurora of the tender heart, her lover's distress thawed her more than a year of passionate protestations could have done. She replied, assuring him of her gratitude, her esteem and respect, and begging him to dismiss such unworthy thoughts of her. But she had no word of encouragement to send him in the note which her lover kissed so rapturously before placing it next his heart. So alarmed, indeed, was Aurora, that she announced her intention of leaving forthwith a Court in which she was exposed to so much danger--a project to which her sister gave a reluctant approval. But the Countess Löwenhaupt was little disposed to leave a Court where she at least was having such a good time; for she, too, had her lovers, and among them the Prince of Fürstenberg, the handsomest man in Saxony, whose devotion was more than agreeable to her. She preferred to play the part of Cupid's agent--to exercise her diplomacy in bringing together those two foolish persons, her sister and the Elector. And so skilfully did she play her part, appealing to Aurora's pity, and assuring Augustus of her sister's love in spite of her seeming coldness, that before many weeks had passed Aurora had yielded and was listening with no unwilling ear to the vows of her exalted lover, now transported to the seventh heaven of happiness. One condition she made, when their mutual troth was plighted, that it should, for a time at least, remain a secret from the Court, and to this the Elector gratefully assented. Such was the strange wooing of Augustus and the Countess Aurora, in which passion had its response in a pity which, in this case at least, was the parent of love.