There is little doubt that the boy and girl were thrown together, and a friendship sprang up between them; but at Sophie Dorothea’s age we can hardly suppose that there was any deeper affection, though Königsmarck, for his part (and he was older), afterwards avowed that he had loved her from childhood.[14] At the most they could only have been boy and girl playing at lovers. Count Philip, as we have seen, came of a distinguished family, even in his boyhood he was endowed with great personal beauty, and he was known to be heir to considerable wealth. Sophie Dorothea was an heiress too, and she was then far removed from the rank of a princess. The possibility of a match between the two was not so remote as might have been imagined—at any rate their names were linked together even at that early period in the little court of Celle. ----- Footnote 14: The authority for this statement is to be found in the Protocol of the trial of Knesebeck, published in Cramer’s _Memoirs of Aurora Königsmarck_. ----- It is scarcely likely that Eléonore, Countess of Wilhelmsburg, shared these views for her daughter—in fact, we know that she looked higher. Among the neighbouring German princes who had watched with benevolent interest the progress of Eléonore was Duke Antony Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel,[15] a cousin of George William, who later became co-regent with his brother, Rudolph Augustus, of the duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. He was a prince of considerable talents and artistic and literary gifts, a restless spirit always intriguing. He was a plain man, so plain that the Duchess of Orleans called him “an ugly baboon”. He early noted the great influence Eléonore had obtained over her slow, easy-going husband. He disliked the Bishop of Osnabrück and he knew of the Duchess Sophia’s hatred of Eléonore. He was aware of the arrangement that had been made between the two brothers as to the succession to the duchy, but nevertheless he thought it would be a good thing if he could manage to divert some of the wealth of the fat little principality of Celle into his somewhat empty coffers. With this end in view he paid a visit to the court of Celle, and treated Eléonore with every possible respect; in fact, he seems to have been genuinely impressed with her virtue and talents, and this homage, coming from a neighbouring prince, was grateful to Eléonore’s self-esteem, for she was sensitive about her somewhat equivocal position. She recognised in him an ally, and laid the foundations of a friendship which lasted through life. ----- Footnote 15: Wolfenbüttel is an old town on the Oker, not far from Brunswick. The famous library contains Luther’s Bible, and the ducal schloss and mortuary chapel are the only other buildings worth mentioning. The seat of the duchy was at Brunswick. -----