While the Court was thus addicted to Pleasures and Feastings, they gave themselves little or no trouble about the Affairs of Government; so that _Dankelman_ the Prime Minister bore the weight of all. He had then the Elector’s intire Confidence, and so absolute an ascendant over his mind, that he was suppos’d to be perfectly secure against the disgraces to which Favorites are commonly expos’d. The Favor he stood in, was owing to the most important Service that ’tis possible for a Subject to render to his Sovereign: For one day when this Prince (as yet only the Prince Electoral) was drinking Coffee with his Mother-in-law the Electoress, he was taken so ill on a sudden that he was oblig’d to retire to his Apartment, where he was seiz’d with Convulsions which threaten’d his Life. It happen’d that _Dankelman_ then the Secretary of his Dispatches was the only Person at hand, to relieve him: He open’d a Box in which there were certain Antidotes, and having given him several Doses, for want of a Surgeon and a Lancet he open’d a Vein with a Penknife; and his management was attended with such good success, that the Prince, after having had a hearty Vomit, found himself quite out of danger. An Event of this nature could not but make a great Noise: The Vulgar especially, who are fond of nothing so much as what is extraordinary, thought that the Prince’s Indisposition did not proceed from a natural Cause, but imagin’d that the Electoress’s tenderness for the Margraves her Sons was reason good enough to suspect that she wanted to get rid of the Prince her Son-in-law, which was to be sure the shortest way to let them into the Succession. The Electoral Prince’s retreat to the Court of the Landgrave of _Hesse-Cassel_ seemed to give a Sanction also to a Suspicion of that sort. But be this as it will, the Prince stay’d there several years, during which he married the Landgrave’s Sister, by whom he had only one Daughter, who marry’d in 1700, to the Hereditary Prince of _Hesse_, now King of _Sweden_.