The unfairness of this clause is patent; but it was somewhat modified by the fact that it was extremely unlikely Eléonore would bear her husband any more children. The Emperor’s assent was proclaimed with some ceremony; a convocation of the deputies of the principality was then assembled, and their agreement with the treaty duly notified. When all the legal preliminaries were over, George William led his morganatic wife of eleven years to the altar, and espoused her with much pomp and solemnity before all his court, his cousin Antony Ulrich, and the little Sophie Dorothea, who must have wondered what it was all about. Ernest Augustus and Sophia were not present at these festivities, and they dissembled their ire as best they could. “Ah!” exclaimed the Bishop to his court at Osnabrück on the night of the marriage, “my brother’s French _madame_ is not a jot the more his wife for being his duchess; but she hath a dignity the more, and therewith may madame rest content.” The jibe was duly reported to the court of Celle; but Eléonore did not feel its sting. She had reached the summit of her ambition; she was the acknowledged consort of the sovereign of Celle; her name was associated with her husband’s in the Church prayers; her child was ranked as princess and betrothed to a prince of equal rank. As Ernest Augustus had said, she could now afford to rest content. CHAPTER III. THE WISDOM OF SERPENTS. (1676-1681.) Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. SHAKSPEARE. The sun of Eléonore’s triumph had no sooner reached its meridian than its radiance began to be overcast. The first cloud was the death of the young Prince Augustus Frederick of Wolfenbüttel, who was killed by a cannon-ball at the siege of Phillipsburg a few months after his betrothal to Sophie Dorothea. His death, though it seemed comparatively unimportant, was destined to exercise an evil influence over the fortunes of the House of Celle, and it snapped the strongest band of union between the Celle-Wolfenbüttel party. The child Princess was happily unconscious of her loss. The betrothal was merely a matter of policy, to take effect later; the courtship was yet to come; and when the tidings came to Celle of the death of her betrothed she was too young to mourn him. At first the Prince’s death affected but little the _entente_ between the courts of Celle and Wolfenbüttel. Duke Antony Ulrich continued the close friend of Eléonore; he had another son, more nearly the age of Sophie Dorothea, and he held him in reserve; for the hour of a fresh arrangement was not yet, and other plans were in the air.