napkin, “you may go, my dear, and help your ‘angelic’ sister with her saucepans.” This was a jeer at the habit of Eléonore and Angelica preparing for themselves a little meal after the French _cuisine_ in their dressing-rooms. Madame von Harburg was not stinted in her establishment; she was allowed a chariot drawn by six horses, but she was never seen abroad with the Duchess Sophia or the Bishop of Osnabrück. She was not, however, a lady content with the second place, and as her influence with her husband was great, and grew greater as his love increased, she had little difficulty in persuading him to take her away with him to the schloss at Celle, where she was safe from the patronage of the Duchess Sophia and could develop on her own lines. George William was glad to take up his abode at the capital of his duchy, and, thanks to his morganatic wife, he abandoned his roving habits and settled down as a model duke, making plans for the improvement of his castle and the better government of his people. After they had been a few months at Celle, Eléonore set the seal on her influence with her husband by presenting him with a daughter—Sophie Dorothea. CHAPTER II. THE PROGRESS OF ELÉONORE. (1666-1676.) Oh, were I seated high as my ambition, I’d place this naked foot on necks of monarchs! WALPOLE. Sophie Dorothea was born in the castle of Celle on September 15, 1666. On the anniversary of her birth two hundred and thirty-two years later it chanced that the writer visited Celle. It must have been on just such a September morning that Sophie Dorothea was born, with the sun blazing down on the yellow-washed walls and shining into the chamber where the birth-bed was, with the limes and silver beeches in the garden flecked with the gold of autumn, and the blue-green reeds waving on the edge of the sluggish moat. The fine old schloss had changed little with the flight of centuries. The drawbridge and portcullis had gone; but the moat, filled with water from the Aller, still flowed dully about the walls, separated from them only by a strip of garden. The great courtyard, with its high yellow walls, timeworn sundial, and pyramid of cannon-balls in one corner (doubtless the spoil of one of George William’s many campaigns), even the flock of white and purple pigeons fluttering down on the rough stones, all seemed to breathe the spirit of the seventeenth century. And looking up at the north wing, where Sophie Dorothea was born, it required little effort of the imagination to people again the deserted courtyard with lackeys and squires, to conjure up the clatter of hoofs and the clank of spurs, the bustle of congratulation, the arrival and departure of messengers and doctors, all of which signified to the little town of Celle that a daughter was born