The news of this double event soon reached Osnabrück and struck consternation into the hearts of Ernest Augustus and his wife. The Duchess Sophia was beside herself with rage, and wrote to tell the news to her niece, Elizabeth Charlotte of Orleans. “We shall soon have to say ‘Madame la Duchesse,’” she exclaimed, “to this little clot of dirt, for is there another name for that mean _intrigante_ who comes from nowhere?” To which Elizabeth Charlotte replied: “Nowhere? My dear aunt, you are mistaken, if you will allow me to say so; she comes from a French family, and therefore from a fraud.” Sophia also contemptuously spoke of Eléonore as “the Signora,” professing to regard her merely as the successor of Signora Buccolini, and she profanely declared that she would rather George William’s marriage were one before God than before man. But these feminine amenities, like the Bishop’s protests, were unavailing; and soon Ernest Augustus and Sophia arrived at the conclusion that, as it was too late to prevent the mischief, the only thing remaining was to safeguard their interests as closely as possible. A fresh agreement was drawn up, lawyers and parchments were brought forth, and the contract between the two brothers was debated and fought out, clause by clause, like a bill in committee. The heckling took many months and bore fruit in many documents. The result of the controversy was at last summarised in a document duly signed by Duke George William, the Bishop of Osnabrück, and Duke Antony Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel. The agreement was signed at Celle in May, 1676, and its main clauses may be summarised as follows:— Duke George William was allowed to “enter into Christian matrimony with the high-born lady Eléonore von Harburg, Countess of Wilhelmsburg”; and his daughter Sophie Dorothea, “promised to wife to His Serene Highness Augustus Frederick Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel,” was to bear the title and arms of a princess by birth of Brunswick-Lüneburg. But a clause was added: “Any other children who may be hereafter born in this wedlock must content themselves with the titles of Counts and Countesses of Wilhelmsburg, and they can make no pretences to the succession to the duchy, which is bestowed on Ernest Augustus Bishop of Osnabrück and his heirs male”.