crown as the first of the Georges.  In the company of these ogresses and of a brace of Turkish attendants, George loved to pass his time in beer-guzzling and debauchery, while his beautiful and insulted wife sought solace in that ill-starred intrigue with Koenigsmarck, which was to lead to his tragic death and her own thirty years’ imprisonment in the Schloss Ahlden, where she, who ought to have been England’s Queen, ate her heart out in loneliness and sorrow.

To George his wife’s intrigue was a welcome excuse for getting rid of her—­a licence for unfettered indulgence in his low tastes; and the tragedy of her eclipse but added zest and emphasis to his unfettered enjoyment of life.  In the hands of Von der Schulenburg the weak-minded, self-indulgent Prince was as clay in the hands of the potter.  She moulded him as she willed, for she was as crafty and diplomatic as she was ill-favoured.  Madame Kielmansegg was relegated to the shade, while she stood in the full limelight.  She bore two daughters to her Royal lover—­daughters who were called her “nieces,” although the fiction deceived nobody—­and as the years passed, each adding, if possible, to her unattractiveness, her hold on the Prince became still stronger.

Thirty years passed thus at the Herrenhausen Court, when the death of Queen Anne made “the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Hanover, rightful King of Great Britain, France and Ireland.”  The sluggish sensual life of the Hanoverian Court was at an end.  George was summoned to a great throne, and no King ever accepted a crown with such reluctance and ill-grace.  He would, and he would not.  For three weeks the English envoys tried every artifice to induce him to accept his new and exalted role—­and finally they succeeded.

But even then he had not counted on the “fair” Ehrengard.  She refused point-blank to go with him to that “odious England,” where chopping off heads seemed to be a favourite pastime.  She was quite happy in Hanover, and there she meant to stay.  She fumed and raged, ran about the Palace gardens, embracing her dearly-loved trees and clinging hysterically to the marble statues, declaring that she could not and would not desert them.  And thus George left her, to start on his unwelcome pilgrimage to England.

Madame von Kielmansegg, however, was of another mind.  If her great rival would not go, she would; and after giving the Elector a day’s start, she raced after him, caught him up, and, to her delight, was welcomed with open arms.  The moment Von der Schulenburg heard of the trick “that Kielmansegg woman” had played on her, she, too, packed her trunks, and, taking her “nieces” with her, also set out in hot pursuit of her Royal lover and tool, and overtook him just as he was on the point of embarking for England.