The future was casting dark shadows along the path of the Princess and her lover throughout the year 1693. Their meetings were brief and stolen; their partings anxious and prolonged—a foretaste of that long parting when they would meet no more. The letters which passed between the lovers during the first five months of this year apparently did not find their way into the hands of Aurora, and are therefore not preserved in this collection. It is, moreover, difficult to follow the movements of the courts of Hanover and Celle during this period, for Colt, our invaluable guide, went to Dresden in January to invest the Elector of Saxony with the Order of the Garter, and remained many months. The English envoy had also to meet the Saxon demands in return for the aid the Elector was to give William and the Allies in the forthcoming campaign. This occupied him until May, when he returned to Celle, and soon after the campaign began simultaneously in Flanders and in the Palatinate. The Electoral Prince of Hanover went with the Hanoverian troops to Flanders, and the Elector of Saxony led his troops to the Palatinate. Königsmarck went neither to Flanders nor the Rhine, but remained at Hanover, despite the fact that his position had become more and more precarious. Whispers of his intrigue with the Princess ran around the court; he was out of favour with those in authority, the Elector treated him with marked coldness. Yet he could not tear himself away from the Princess, and would not quit the Hanoverian service, as it gave him the pretext for keeping near her. For Königsmarck to remain in the Hanoverian army meant ruin; he had no hope of promotion, and if the intrigue were discovered it would probably mean his imprisonment or death, certainly his banishment. His financial affairs were neglected, and this, added to his gambling and extravagant living, made him very short of ready money; while, to make matters worse, the King of Sweden, who (with Denmark) was now quarrelling with the Brunswick princes to a point which looked like open war, threatened to confiscate his lands unless he quitted the service of an unfriendly prince. The outlook could hardly have been gloomier, and Königsmarck gained little to compensate him for the risks he was running. Since the beginning of the year there had been an obvious, though unexpressed, determination on the part of those in authority to keep him and the Princess apart. In January he went to Hamburg. On his return to Hanover the Princess was sent to Celle, and she did not return until the preparations for the campaign were well advanced. It was expected that Königsmarck would serve in the campaign in Flanders as he had served the year before; but he excused himself on divers grounds—the hope of being near the Princess through the summer, while the Electoral Prince was away, was too tempting for him to resist. There may have been another reason, too, for last year he