IS TO WED THE PRINCE OF BAIREUTH.

Crown-Prince Friedrich being settled so far, his Majesty takes up the
case of Wilhelmina, the other ravelled skein lying on hand. Wilhelmina
has been prisoner in her Apartment at Berlin all this while: it is
proper Wilhelmina be disposed of; either in wedlock, filially obedient
to the royal mind; or in some much sterner way, "within four walls," it
is whispered, if disobedient.

Poor Wilhelmina never thought of disobeying her parents: only, which of
them to obey? King looks towards the Prince of Baireuth again, agreed on
before those hurly-burlies now past; Queen looks far otherwards. Queen
Sophie still desperately believes in the English match for Wilhelmina;
and has subterranean correspondences with that Court; refusing to
see that the negotiation is extinct there. Grumkow himself, so
over-victorious in his late task, is now heeling towards England;
"sincere in his wish to be well with us," thinks Dickens: Grumkow
solaces her Majesty with delusive hopes in the English quarter: "Be
firm, child; trust in my management; only swear to me, on your eternal
salvation, that never, on any compulsion, will you marry another than
the Prince of Wales;--give me that oath!" [Wilhelmina, i. 314.] Such
was Queen Sophie's last proposal to Wilhelmina,--night of the 27th of
January, 1731, as is computable,--her Majesty to leave for Potsdam
on the morrow. They wept much together that night, but Wilhelmina
dexterously evaded the oath, on a religious ground. Prince of Baireuth,
whom Papa may like or may not like, has never yet personally made
appearance: who or what will make appearance, or how things can or will
turn, except a bad road, is terribly a mystery to Wilhelmina.

What with chagrin and confinement, what with bad diet (for the very diet
is bad, quality and quantity alike unspeakable), Wilhelmina sees herself
"reduced to a skeleton;" no company but her faithful Sonsfeld, no
employment but her Books and Music;--struggles, however, still to keep
heart. One day, it is in February, 1731, as I compute, they are sitting,
her Sonsfeld and she, at their sad mess of so-called dinner, in their
remote upper story of the Berlin Schloss, tramp of sentries the one
thing audible; and were "looking mournfully at one another, with nothing
to eat but a soup of salt and water, and a ragout of old bones full of
hairs and slopperies [nothing else; that was its real quality, whatever
fine name they might give it, s