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.