“If I must give up seeing you, I will give up the world altogether. I cannot contemplate such a thing. Yet I fear I must be prepared for it, for the Electress of Brandenburg has told me that you will be sent away, but on some pretext which will not apparently concern me; she had it from Countess Platen. I cannot describe to you the state I have been in for the last four or five days; if grief could kill, I should surely be dead. I no longer sleep, I do not eat at all, and I am a prey to gloomy foreboding. It may be that time and absence will cure you of your passion, but mine will end only with my life. That is a truth time will show. I have your portrait. I cannot look on it without tears; I wish it might testify to the intensity of my sorrow and love. I fear many afflictions and misfortunes are in store. Le Barbouilleur is in league with Countess Platen and her cabal. He tries to harm Aurora in everything he possibly can, and went so far as to say to the Duchess Sophia that she was a ‘she-devil’. I should hardly have believed he could have been so base a coward as that. I told you that he once began to show airs to me, but he did not go far; the anger I evinced soon stopped him. “You say you are ‘going to Brussels to cure yourself’. How can you have the cruelty to write such a thing to me—who am so sensitive and tender? Anger alone spoke when you wrote those words. You don’t mean to go. I know not yet by what mischance one of your letters was opened: La Confidente is trying to find out; fortunately you say little in it. But you tell me that they will force you to leave me. Let me know what makes you think so; reassure me in my trouble and anxiety. My love is proof against all; I vow you an everlasting constancy. “The Duke [of Hanover] went away this morning on a visit to my father.[173] He took only Le Barbouilleur with him. I believe the Duchess will follow, and I shall go with her, unless the Prince should arrive soon.... I have been interrupted at this point in an alarming manner. I thought I was perfectly safe, for I gave orders to say that I was asleep. I had your portrait quite near me, attached to a screen, and....”[174] ----- Footnote 173: At the Duke of Celle’s hunting-seats of Epsdorff and Göhre. In his _Despatch_, September 30, 1692, Colt mentions that the “Elector of Brandenburg has gone home and that the Duke of Hanover is with his brother, hunting”. Footnote 174: The end of this letter is not to be found. ----- _The Princess to Königsmarck._ “[HANOVER,] _October_ 10/20.