er almost accomplished plan
to escape and live quietly in a distant country. This last blow
shattered her mind. She wrote one last, madly cursing letter to King
George challenging him to meet her before a twelvemonth and a day at the
judgment bar of God. A few days later she died of brain fever. A
soothsayer had once told King George that he would not outlive his
divorced wife a year. Therefore, the superstitious king did his utmost
to keep the captive in good health. Physicians were ordered to visit her
frequently, and she was permitted daily exercise, both riding and
walking, in the open air.

Soon after Sophie Dorothea's death, King George's health began to fail.
He started for his beloved Hanover. Just outside Osnabriick a folded
paper was thrown into the royal carriage. It was Sophie Dorothea's last
maledictory letter. After reading it the king fell down in a fit from
the effects of which he died.

As every human emotion of love in princely marriage was crushed out by
reasons of state policy, so religion was subjected entirely to
expediency. When the Electress of Hanover was asked concerning her
daughter, Sophie Charlotte: "Of what religion is the princess?" she
replied: "The princess is of no religion, as yet. We are waiting to see
what faith the man whom she marries may prefer her to profess." When it
was decided that the Prince of Brandenburg should marry her it was found
by the politicians that the princess "of no religion at all" suited him
exactly. Sophie Charlotte remained true to her early training, or rather
to her lack of training. She was a vigorous freethinker to the end of
her days. She was much more worthy the name of philosopher than her
mother. "She insists, always," wrote Leibnitz, her lifelong friend and
admirer, "in knowing the Why of the Why." At Berlin, Sophie Charlotte
held a genuinely intellectual court. She gathered around her the
foremost scholars of the day. Where scholarship was concerned, the first
Queen of Prussia ignored race, creed, and even social station. She
cordially welcomed to the circle of her friendship any man or woman with
brains. The queen had inherited the grace and tact of her grandmother,
Elizabeth Stuart. She was immensely popular. Sophie Charlotte possessed
an ever ready sense of humor. She dearly loved to set an infidel and a
court chaplain arguing against each other. She delighted in doing things
incongruous to the occasion. At her husband's magnificent coronation,