“I am awaiting Her Highness’s commands.[74] When you give me leave I shall fly to you; and if I am not wanted, I shall show that I cannot attach myself to any one else, for I shall take the first mail coach to join my regiment. I hope that in time Fortune will get tired of persecuting me so cruelly, and Fate will be in my favour; but whatever misfortunes may befall, I shall bear them with joy so long as the heart I adore remains constant to me. My happiness and fortune are there, my ambition is bounded there. For pity’s sake believe me faithful. To convince you the better how I love you, how I worship you, I sign this with my blood. Whilst you love me, you will be worshipped by ”KÖNIGSMARCK. “(_Written in blood._)” ----- Footnote 72: Prince Ernest Augustus. Footnote 73: The Count de Reuss was the uncle by marriage of Sophie Dorothea; he had married Angelica d’Olbreuse, sister of the Duchess of Celle. Footnote 74: _I.e._, the commands of the Princess. ----- Duke Ernest Augustus was now setting out on an autumn visit to the Duke of Celle at his hunting-seats of Epsdorff and Göhre.[75] The Duke of Celle was much keener on the chase than on affairs of state. Every autumn he went to Epsdorff, a village some eight miles from Hamburg, where he had a schloss, to hunt the stag and the wild boar; and then to Göhre, a remote spot some fifty miles from Celle. He took his duchess and his court with him; and this year he combined pleasure with business, for he invited the Duke of Hanover and Duke Antony Ulrich to hunt with him by day and discuss affairs of state in the evening. The result of this visit was that the Duke of Hanover was persuaded to take up a neutral, and no longer hostile, attitude towards William of Orange. ----- Footnote 75: Colt’s _Despatch_, October, 1691, Epsdorff. ----- [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF ONE OF KÖNIGSMARCK’S LETTERS TO THE PRINCESS. _Photographed from the original manuscript in the University Library of Lund._ ] Princess Sophie Dorothea was setting out for Epsdorff with her father-in-law, but the day before starting she was taken ill. Königsmarck at first hoped that the indisposition was feigned, in order to avoid her departure from Hanover and from him. “Alas!” he laments, “we shall never be happy. No sooner do I recover from sickness than my adored one sinks under it. I suffered in mine, but yours makes me suffer a great deal more; it hurt me so much to see you in pain that I wished myself a hundred miles away. You will say that was not very kind, but I could not bear to see you in such agony. If perchance your illness were not so grave as it seems, it would be a little comfort, for I might think you were pretending, for love of me.”