[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK][223]
[Hanover, _December 1692_ (?)]
Let [him] be at 8 o’clock in the evening near the door of the great
hall, where the Pr[incess] is accustomed to play cards; he will be
able to meet her there in safety, since nobody passes there,
to-morrow being Sunday.
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Footnote 223:
What is here printed as two letters (F 33 and F 34) runs on
without break in the Berlin manuscript. It is, however, difficult
to believe that the earlier portion is not distinct from the
latter, and that the former was not written by ‘_la Confidante_,’
and the latter by Königsmarck; and I have therefore, though with
diffidence, ventured on the arrangement in the text. It must not
be supposed that these two letters refer to the assignation which
led to the catastrophe of the amour between Sophia Dorothea and
Königsmarck. The day of Königsmarck’s disappearance was, no doubt,
a Sunday, and the place in which, according to tradition, he was
struck down dead was by the door of the _Rittersaal_, in the
_Leineschloss_ at Hanover. But apart from the fact that, according
to Rüdiger’s statement (Cramer, vol. i. p. 69), Königsmarck did
not leave his lodgings till between 9 and 10 p.m., the body of the
letters in the Lund and in the Berlin collection appear to belong
to an earlier date than that at which Königsmarck quitted the
Hanoverian service (probably about the spring of 1694): and it can
hardly be supposed that these two specially incriminating letters
were left by the Secretary Hildebrandt to be seized, and that they
found their way to Berlin with a series of which they formed no
integral part. The Princess, it may be added, was in the habit of
playing cards in the Grand Hall as early as 1691 (cf. Wilkins, p.
145).
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