These words, spoken with a gentle, winning voice, had never died away in her heart. Twelve years had passed since then, and they still rang in her ear, in the tumult of the world as well as in the quiet of her lonely room. They had comforted her when the shame of her existence oppressed her; rejoiced her when, with the delight of youth and happiness, she had given herself up to pleasure. She had followed him quietly, devotedly, as a little dog follows his master. He had kept his word; he had had her instructed during three years, and then sent her to Paris, in order to give her the last polish, the tournure of the world, however much it had cost him to separate from her, or might embarrass him, with his scanty means, to afford the increase of expense. A year elapsed and Wilhelmine returned a pleasing lady, familiar with the tone of the great world, and at home in its manners and customs. The prince had kept his word--that which he had promised her as he took her from her sister’s house, to make her a fine, accomplished lady. And when he repeated to her now “Come,” could she refuse him--him to whom she owed every thing, whom she loved as her benefactor, her teacher, her friend, and lover? She followed him, and concealed herself for him in the modest little dwelling at Potsdam. For him she lived in solitude, anxiously avoiding to show herself publicly, that the king should never know of her existence, and in his just anger sever the unlawful tie which bound her to the Prince of Prussia. [Footnote: “Memoirs of the Countess Lichtenau,” p. 80.] Wilhelmine recalled the past seven years of her life, her two children, whom she had borne to the prince, and the joy that filled his heart as he became a father, although his lawful wife had also borne him children. She looked around her small, quiet dwelling, arranged in a modest manner, not as the favorite of the Prince of Prussia, but as an unpretending citizen’s wife; she thought how oft with privations, with want even, she had had to combat; how oft the ornaments which the prince had sent her in the rare days of abundance had been taken to the pawnbrokers to provide the necessary wants of herself and children. Her eyes flashed with pride and joy at the thought which she dared to breathe to herself, that not for gold or riches, power or position, had she sold her love, her honor, and her good name. “It was from pure affinity, from gratitude and affection, that I followed the husband of my heart, although he was a prince,” she said. Still the shame of her existence weighed upon her. The king had commanded her to hide her head so securely that no one might know her shame, or the levity of the prince. “Go! and let me never see you again!”