HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA
Page: 27

(actual box on the ear, some call it),--never to be forgotten or
forgiven! And on Sunday 1st of July, 1694, Colonel Count Philip
Konigsmark, Colonel in the Hanover Dragoons, was seen for the last
time in this world. From that date, he has vanished suddenly
underground, in an inscrutable manner: never more shall the light
of the sun, or any human eye behold that handsome blackguard man.
Not for a hundred and fifty years shall human creatures know,
or guess with the smallest certainty, what has become of him.

And shortly after Konigsmark's disappearance, there is this sad
phenomenon visible: A once very radiant Princess (witty, haughty-
minded, beautiful, not wise or fortunate) now gone all ablaze into
angry tragic conflagration; getting locked into the old Castle of
Ahlden, in the moory solitudes of Luneburg Heath: to stay there
till she die,--thirty years as it proved,--and go into ashes and
angry darkness as she may. Old peasants, late in the next century,
will remember that they used to see her sometimes driving on the
Heath,--beautiful lady, long black hair, and the glitter of
diamonds in it; sometimes the reins in her own hand, but always
with a party of cavalry round her, and their swords drawn.
[ Die Herzogin von Ahlden (Leipzig, 1852),
p. 22. Divorce was, 28th December, 1694; death, 13th November,
1726,--age then 60.] "Duchess of Ahlden," that was her title in
the eclipsed state. Born Princess of Zelle; by marriage, Princess
of Hanover ( Kurprinzessin ); would have been
Queen of England, too, had matters gone otherwise than they did.--
Her name, like that of a little Daughter she had, is Sophie
Dorothee: she is Cousin and Divorced Wife of Kurprinz George;
divorced, and as it were abolished alive, in this manner. She is
little Friedrich Wilhelm's Aunt-in-law; and her little Daughter
comes to be his Wife in process of time. Of him, or of those
belonging to him, she took small notice, I suppose, in her then
mood, the crisis coming on so fast. In her happier innocent days
she had two children, a King that is to be, and a Queen;
George II. of England, Sophie Dorothee of Prussia; but must not