One stipulation the Duchess Eléonore was able to enforce before the marriage contract was signed: George Louis’s intrigue with Madame Bussche was a matter of common notoriety, and she insisted that it should be broken off and the mistress sent away from Hanover. This very reasonable request was supposed to be very unreasonable, but Eléonore was firm. Sophie Dorothea had not yet notified her consent in writing, and people were beginning to comment on her downcast looks. The Duke of Celle did not wish it to appear that she was forced into an unwilling marriage, and to humour her and her mother it was promised that Madame Bussche should be sent away. The Duchess Sophia went back to Hanover to see the business carried through. In return for this concession Sophie Dorothea was induced to write the following letter to her aunt; it was merely a formal letter, probably dictated in substance and simply copied by her. Reading between the lines, we can see the mute protest that runs through it. “MADAME, “I have so much respect for my lord the Duke your husband, and for my lord my own father, that in whatever manner they may act on my behalf I shall always be very content. Your Highness will do me, I know, the justice to believe that no one can be more sensible than I am of the many marks of your goodness. I will carefully endeavour all my life long to deserve the same, and to make it evident to Your Highness by my respect and very humble service that you could not choose as a daughter one who knows better than myself how to pay to you what is due. In which duty I shall feel very great pleasure, and also in showing you by my submission that I am, “Madame, “Your Highness’s very humble “And very obedient servant, ”SOPHIE DOROTHEA. “AT CELLE, _October 21, 1682_.” [Illustration: THE ELECTRESS SOPHIA. _Photographed from the statue in the gardens of Herrenhausen._ ] The Duchess Sophia probably found in this letter and in the tears and anguish of Eléonore and her daughter some compensation for the effort it cost her to make the visit to Celle. Of her part in the betrothal she was probably ashamed, for we find her making no mention in her letters to the Duchess of Orleans of her journey to Celle, but concerning the marriage she wrote as follows:—