His court was the abode of an indescribable dissoluteness. As crown prince, he had been married to Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick, who, though not of good moral repute herself, nevertheless declined intercourse with her dissolute consort. We must waive the responsibility for the following report given by Scherr upon the authority of Dampmartin, the well-informed courtier. "Frederick the Great, desiring the succession to the throne to be ensured before his death, ordered an old chamberlain to communicate to the princess that he, the king, wished she should admit to intimate intercourse the lieutenant of the royal guard N. N. (Von Schmettau), who had impressed the king by the beauty of his form, his conduct, and his bravery. But no eloquence prevailed upon the princess to yield to the shameless demand, whereupon the king resolved upon the divorce of his nephew." Frederick William II. later married Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt, who bore him an heir to the throne, the pure and honest Frederick William III. (1797-1840). It must be said, however, that lawful marriage was but an episode in the life of the immoral king Frederick William II., while favorite after favorite divided his affections. Wilhelmina Encke, nominal wife of the chamberlain Rietz, later raised to the rank of Countess of Lichtenau, maintained her position with the king during his whole life, not only through the influence of her own charms, but by means of immoral services in connection with other beautiful women. Other ladies of noble birth, Julie von Voss and Countess Sophie von Donhoff, exacted almost a formal marriage from the king while the queen was actually alive, and the Evangelical Consistory was compelled submissively to sanction the royal bigamy. Rich payments to the families of the royal pseudo-wives are on record, and prove the accumulation of a debt of forty-nine million thalers at the death of the king, who had had at his disposal the treasure of Frederick the Great. It is with relief that we leave the pages stained with the depravity and moral bankruptcy of the era of Countess Lichtenau. One royal woman, shining in the lustre of purity, genuine nobility, and self-sacrificing patriotism, dispels the moral darkness around her as the sun purifies and warms the atmosphere of the world. Princess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, consort of Frederick William III., mother of Emperor William I., great-grandmother of the actual German emperor, William II., is one of the purest and noblest of women of all times, and is rightly sanctified in the hearts, not only of all Germans, but of all, whether friend or foe, who have ever contemplated her life, her motherhood, her martyrdom, and her early death. From her pure bosom sprang, to a large extent, the present greatness of Germany.