child dreaded such an ogress!"

Such were the two chief favourites of this unnatural heir to the throne
of Hanover, who, by a curious turn of Fortune's wheel, was to wear the
English 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.

Ma