[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK]
[Wiesbaden], _September 2nd/12th {1692}_.
It was so late when I wrote to you that I could not reply to all that
you told me. I reread your letter several times; it is a mixture of love
and raillery which I find very pleasing; and it seems to me, whatever
countenance you may assume, that my journey does not find favour with
you. Yet you are altogether as wrong as possible; for, according to all
appearances, I shall go away again from this place without having seen
any reasonable person, and I desire it with all my heart. I do not think
of going to Frankfort fair, and I shall not say a word to help to bring
this about. It seems to me that this ought to convince you that I am not
in quest of society, and that I am incapable of thinking of pleasures
when I do not see you. I hope to leave this place in a fortnight. The
Peda[gogue] has to-day taken this resolution. I return with her to join
the _Grondeur_; and I shall proceed to Han[over] a little before the
return of the Reformer. I cannot yet tell you anything positive about
what concerns the Göhrde;[208] I do not, however, think that I shall go
there, for the season is too advanced for the Reformer to be able to be
there, and I hope that, provided that nothing keeps you where you
are,[209] I shall soon be able to see you. I shall judge of your
affection by your eagerness, but I entreat you to take your measures so
well that I may see you in private on the first occasion. It would be
impossible for me to bear seeing you in public, and my transport [of
delight] would betray me. They say that the French could easily carry us
off. This makes me wish very much to get away, for I should not at all
like to be taken prisoner, and I wish to keep your conquest safe for
you. I am delighted with your [present?],[210] and I offer you all the
thanks for it which you deserve. It took me by surprise and I did not
expect it at all, which makes the thing all the more obliging. There is
no sentinel in the world that you ought to fear, and the prisoner may
reckon on the prison which will always be open to him and closed to all
the rest of the world. As to this you may depend on me, and as to a love
which will serve as a model; I wish to convince you of it, although you
have some of it, and that I find no happiness or satisfaction except in
loving you and in being loved. You seem to me so little certain of this
truth that I am sensibly affected by it. Tell me what should be done so
that you should be unable to doubt it any more; there is nothing that I
would not joyfully do in order to make you see that for me you take the
place of everything else, and that all my desires and my ambition are
confined to pleasing you. If nothing but this is needed to render you
happy, you are more so than any person in the world, for I do not desire
to live but for you alone, and I renounce with pleasure the whole world,
in order never to belong to anyone but yourself.
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Footnote 208:
George Lewis’ favourite hunting-box near Lüneburg, in the eastern
corner of the principality. There is a picture of it at Herrenhausen,
with a meeting of the hunt in face of the _château_.
Footnote 209:
In camp in Flanders.
Footnote 210:
The significance of the word _carême_ in this passage is obscure. Its
ordinary meaning ‘lent, fasting’ gives no sense. Dr. Braunholtz
informs me that the word may also mean ‘a collection of lent-sermons’;
but, as he observes, this was not a very likely gift in the
circumstances. And a ‘lenten gift’ of any kind seems out of season in
September.
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