tonishment at seeing him. Anxious and doubtful, Philippe pushed past her, and without further ceremony entered the room. The princess was amazed and alarmed when she saw who it was, and at once scented danger. He hastily produced the note that Mademoiselle von Knesebeck had written, and learnt to his consternation that the latter had not been seen since the morning, and that the princess knew nothing of the communication whatever. Beside herself with fear, but grasping the situation at once, she besought Philippe to quit the palace instantly, and, after impressing a kiss upon her hand, he turned upon his heel to retrace his steps. He passed along the passage, went down the stair, and paused for a moment at its foot. The whole episode had covered so short a space of time, the discovery of the treachery had been so instantaneous and its purport so conclusive, that he had had no time for reflection, or to form any distinct plan other than to quit the precincts of the palace as quickly as he could. He had thought as he paused that he heard a slight noise in the direction of the stove, but when he stopped it had ceased. In order to gain the outside of the building he was compelled to leave it by the same door by which he had entered, and this necessitated his passing by the stove. He could see nothing clearly; the shadows flickered indistinctly, and he intuitively unsheathed his sword as he strode across the intervening space. Just as he was about to pass the stove three men emerged from its deep shadow and barred the way, and Philippe knew that he was caught like a rat in a trap. He halted, and prepared to sell his life as dearly as might be. Two of the men set upon him, but he was a fine and skilful swordsman, and he defended himself dexterously and courageously. He wounded one man, and contrived to place himself with his back to the wall. At the moment of attack he had been encumbered by the cloak which he had assumed for the purpose of disguise, but when the fight had begun he had flung it to the ground in order that his movements should be unimpeded. Disabling another of his antagonists by a swift movement he began to manœuvre and edge towards the door, hoping thus to improve his chances of escape; but one of the men picked up the cloak, and, flinging it over Philippe's head, thus obscured his sight, while two men who had joined the others poignarded him. He fell. "The princess is innocent," he gasped, as he lay on the floor at the mercy of his antagonists. And now like a serpent from out its hole emerged the fiend who had planned this ghastly revenge, unwilling that her quondam and faithless lover should expiate his crime and that she should not witness his agony. She had hidden herself behind the tapestry, there to behold her horrible order executed, and to gloat over the fulfilment of her vengeance. When she glided up Königsmarck still lived. "Kill me," he breathed, "but spare the princess "Bind him with cords," said the woman, when she saw that he was alive. The men lifted him to his feet, but the blood poured from the wounds of the dying man, and he fell heavily to the ground. She endeavored to extract a confession from his failing lips, but so long as life and sense were left he remained true to his honor and his love. "The princess is innocent," he murmured, as the ferocious woman stood quivering with hatred, rage, and black revenge over his dying form; and while he was still muttering his expir ing testimony to the innocence of her for whom he suffered, she raised her foot, encased in its high wooden-heeled shoe, and, placing it on his mouth, she stamped out his last expiring breath. In his desperate resistance Philippe had killed two of the guards, and had wounded two of the Italians; but it was one of the court employés who had flung the cloak over him, thinking to secure his arrest. The princess became cognizant of the scuffle by the noisy barking of a little pet dog, and on her opening the door of her chamber it rushed down the stair, fol. lowed by its mistress. As she descended, the lifeless form of Philippe was in the act of being carried away by two of the men, and, as the horror of the scene presented itself to her, her strength failed; she made a desperate effort to call for help, and fainted. The murderers left their victim, carried her into her own room, laid her on a couch, locked the door from the outside, and, after conveying the count's dead body to an underground room, returned to the Ritter-Saal. Immediately after the consummation of the tragedy Madame von Platen had hastened to the elector's apartment to impart the news of the catastrophe to his horrified ears, and, leaving him half dead with fear and remorse, had returned herself to see that all traces of the crime were as far as possible removed — a task in which she herself assisted with energy and despatch. The unutterable horror of the event, though it distracted the princess, Legal proceedings were shortly after commenced against the princess for infi. delity to her husband. She was severely interrogated, but nothing intimidated her or caused her to answer the questions put to her with any confusion, and when asked Wolfenbüttel, she replied in the affirma tive, but no other attempt to convict her out of her own mouth was successful. She met intimidation with serenity, persuasion with contempt and indifference, and the inquisitors were foiled. When all these means had failed to induce confession, one more endeavor was made, which surpassed all former ones in infamy and baseness. An altar was erected in her apartment, candles were lit, ecclesiastics summoned, and there, in the presence of certain members of the court, the officiating priest exhorted the suffering and insulted woman to confess her sin. With calm and reverent demeanor she approached the altar and received the Holy Communion in token of her innocence. As she returned to her place after receiving, she turned towards and addressed the Countess Platen, who stood at her right hand, and invited her to do the same. But even the black and wicked heart of the guilty woman shrank before this supreme ordeal; she was unprepared to steep herself in the blasphemy involved in such an action; and, muttering some feeble plea about her health, she hastily quitted the scene wherein the accused had borne herself with dignified tranquillity, and the accusers had entirely broken down in their attempts to crush and overwhelm her. and overwhelmed her with grief and despair, neither crushed her nor daunted her courage. In her own mind she felt no doubt whatever that the elector, as well as her husband and Madame von Platen, were implicated in the foul deed. Horror, disgust, and hatred for the perpetrators if it were true that she intended to fly to of the murder were her overpowering emotions, and when her women entered her chamber the next morning her resolution was taken. She sent a message to the elector that she desired to speak with him. The electoral prince, who had been absent from Hanover for four-and-twenty hours, had arrived early in the morning from his hunting-box, and had been received by his father, who imparted to him the shocking event that had so overwhelmed him with alarm and dismay. George received the news with no less consternation. Who could foretell the sequel of such a disaster? upon whom would rest the imputation of the crime? Obeying the haughty summons of the princess, Ernst August, followed by his son, entered her apartment, and the two stood before her in trepidation and alarm. After a moment's silence, during which she surveyed them both with unflinching scorn and horror, “I have but a very few words to say to you," she said; "I will not lower myself by assuring you of my innocence. I acknowledge the fault that permitted Königsmarck to hold a place in my heart; but the rest of my life shall be dedicated to my repentance. I have been the cause of his death, and to me it remains to avenge it, if it lays in my power." The elector, whose courage deserted him during the interview, implored her to be reasonable, and to reflect. He was indeed unused to such deeds, unskilled in the intricacies of assassination; he knew not what to think, what to say. His chief terror was, if the murder became known, that it would be laid at his door, and he assured her in passionate and agitated language that the fatal result was due to Königsmarck's resistance to his arrest, and that there was but one means whereby the terrible affair could be withheld from public notoriety and scandal, and she must now set herself to live peaceably with the prince her husband. "Sir," she answered, "I will never live with Königsmarck's murderer. If I am compelled to do so it will only be to avenge his death." Seeing that no impression could be made upon her, the elector quitted the room, beckoning his son, who had not spoken one word during the interview, to follow him, which he required no second bidding to do. The princess's demeanor at this trying juncture had not been without its effect on the elector. Even if the whole of his suspicions were not allayed, they were partially so, and he saw no reason why there should not be a reconciliation between his son and daughter-in-law. His earnest desire was to lull suspicion with regard to his own and his son's part in the affair, and to silence the wagging tongues of scandal which were agitating the airfor Königsmarck's sudden disappearance had caused a considerable flutter in society; and while some found it convenient to accept the diligently circulated rumor that he had escaped to avoid arrest, there were others who affirmed that the bright, the brave, the gallant Philippe had fallen a victim to the wrath of the father and son, and that his blood was crying for vengeance from out the depths of the Hanoverian schloss. Again and again did den was a fortified place, and melancholy and gloomy to a degree scarcely conceivable. The household were bound by an oath to keep her from all communication with the outer world, but in order to give her imprisonment an air of dignity and position she received the title of Duchess of Ahlden. Ernst August beseech his daughter-in- | promise extracted from her father that be law to reconsider the position, and place would neither ask to see her nor combefore her the conditions by which she municate with her by any means whatever might regain her lost footing and reap--a pledge he fulfilled to the letter. Ahlpear as the wife of his son, and the dire results that must follow her refusal; but he could make no impression on her; her good name, her future well-being, even the thoughts of her children, counted as nothing when compared with the murder of the man she had loved, the horrors of that dreadful night, and all the misery and humiliations she had endured since her unhappy marriage. "Tell your master," she said, when she was approached by one of his myrmidons with the threat that she would be ignominiously banished from Hanover if she rejected his terms, "Tell your master that when I turn my back on Hanover, all roads will be beautiful in my eyes." Although she had often given proofs of her resolute spirit, they were hardly prepared for the dauntless and indomitable courage with which she faced their threatened vengeance. No earthly consideration would induce her to temporize or to move one inch in the direction of submission or compromise. They were aware if she proved her case and obtained a divorce on her own ac count, that they must yield up all the pecuniary advantages they had gained by the marriage, that George's succession to her inheritance would be barred, and possibly also the ultimate union of Hanover and Celle. A Consistorial Court was therefore called together, its members being chosen by the elector, illegal in its conformation, and containing in itself no element whatever of justice or impartiality. She was tortured by the visits of lawyers, who strove to entrap her into unguarded admissions; but so slight were the evidences they were able to collect of misconduct as regarded Königsmarck, that they abandoned the charge altogether, and his name did not even appear in the deed of accusation. The basis or it were more to the purpose to call it the plot-resolved itself into the feeble accusation of incompatibility of temper. Of this, then, she was found guilty, and a decree was passed for the dissolution of the marriage. George was specifically permitted to re-marry, while she was doomed to perpetual imprisonment, and she was at once conveyed to the castle of Ahlden, surrounded by a staff of domestics selected by the elector and his son, and an armed group of gaolers. The most stringent rules were laid down for her safe keeping, and a There is a curious particular with which we have become acquainted since commencing our sketch a legend so barbarous in its essence that but we learned it from the lips of one intimately acquainted with Hanover's secret histories we would refuse to receive as authentic. The teller, however, has undoubted right to the best information concerning the convictions of those more immediately concerned. The following are the details: Within the innermost circles of the Hanoverian court it was known to some that the morning after the murder, and while Philippe lay dead in the room where his assassins had borne him, George caused the heart of the victim of Madame von Platen's revenge to be taken from the body, to be reduced to ashes, and thereafter to be placed in a small leaden box, which in its turn was fitted into a footstool, and that this footstool was used by George the First to the end of his vindictive life, and that, moreover, it still exists. There is a cold and bloodthirsty atmosphere enveloping this action for which there seems to be absolutely no parallel in modern story - the fear of forgetting for a moment that the dead man was trapped, tortured, silenced, murdered — the devilish desire to possess a constant and tangible presence of what was once the spring of his life, the dead essence of his love, the mainspring of his misfortune, and that all this was a joy and a pleasure to any human being indicates that the spirit of Nero and Caligula still obtained in Hanover in the year of our Lord 1694. To us it appeared, when the story was first told us, that it was strong evidence that George had been privy to the crime; but there is no other whatever, and we can only recount the facts as they were told to us, and repeat that all other circumstances point to the probability that neither himself nor his father was concerned in its perpetration. Lord Lexington, who became British minister at Vienna at this time, was in structed at the outset of his embassy to investigate "this Königsmarck mystery;" other side he may meet with mercy, not justice; receive pity for his sorrows, not vengeance for his sins. Sophia Dorothea then, the consort of George, king of Great Britain and Ireland, but not his wife; the mother of the heir to that splendid inheritance, but a stranger to her son, finished her weary pilgrimage on the 2nd of November, 1726. She had been ailing for some months, but her condition had not been thought dangerous, so when she turned her tired face to the wall and breathed out her last desolate sigh, it caused a mild surprise to those about her. She was interred at Celle, in the gloomy vaults of whose temple she took her place amongst those scions of the house of Brunswick with whom she had been deemed unworthy to associate during her life. and William the Third, in response to the But the longest day wears to a close, elector of Saxony's entreaties, had caused and every traveller, be he sinner or saint, inquiries to be made by his representative, arrives at his journey's end at last; and but with no satisfactory results. By de- before passing through the great black grees the matter faded into the past, no portal of death-that portal that shuts answer was given, and Lord Lexington out so relentlessly the mysteries beyond does not seem to have been of much use-haply he may look back on the dusty to any one. It is a significant fact that the road and fading landscape with a sigh Hanoverinns destroyed every document and a prayer, humbly trusting that on the that bore on the story, and although some affirm that they were unwilling to hand down to posterity the proofs of the infidelity of Sophia Dorothea, it is surely more probable that they would have preferred to do this rather than suffer the ugly doubts to rest upon their own conduct, which was the inevitable alternative. Little remains to be told. Political irony decreed that the princess should be treated with the greatest ceremony. She drove daily, guarded by a cavalry escort, who surrounded her carriage with drawn swords. Her mother was permitted to visit her occasionally, but always in the presence of the elector's spies and dependants. The electoral prince, as is well known, became king of England, but this change in his position and life made none in hers. Later on, when the remorseless monarch was nearing his end, whether it was, as some said, that the prognostications of a soothsayer that his own demise would follow closely on hers, and that he deemed that her life would be safer under his own surveillance, or whether he feared to face death with so black a crime as his life-long persecution of his wife on his conscience, it is impossible to say; but he made overtures to her of reconciliation and pardon. Thirty years and more had elapsed since the events narrated, still loneliness and captivity, though they had broken her heart, had not quelled her spirit. Her scorn was as scathing, her resolution as unconquerable as in the days of yore. "If I am guilty," she said, "I am not worthy of being his wife; and if I am innocent he is not worthy of me." For two-and-thirty years she remained a prisoner within that dreary fastness. The peasants became used to seeing the sadlooking and beautiful lady as she was driven swiftly across Luneburg heath, guarded by the clattering dragoons. She was kind and generous to the poor, and interested herself in their welfare; but the one thing needful to make her life tolerable that of congenial companionship - was sternly denied her. Two centuries have passed since the events which we have tried to bring before the reader, and the stair at the foot of which Königsmarck paused before he strode forward to meet his hidden foes is still shown in the Hanoverian schloss; and it was believed by many, in the days when kings still reigned in Hanover, and dispensed their princely hospitality in the royal abode, that on these occasions of revelry and mirth the pale and impalpable shade of the murdered Königsmarck haunted its precincts, and had been seen flitting across the courtyard with a bloody mark across its mouth. Further still, it was asserted that when Elizabeth von Platen lay dying, a prey to disease and stricken with blindness, her feeble and paralyzed tongue cried aloud to be deliv ered from the mute, accusing spirit that tormented her death-bed with its ghastly presence, and which, though blind to all earthly things, she yet saw. But Philippe remained inexorably sitting by her bed. side until her own spirit took flight, and his shadow only melted away when she breathed her last. MILLICENT ERSKINE WEMYSS. From The Fortnightly Review. ON THE NEW STAR IN AURIGA. even but extreme cases of the large class of variable stars which wax and wane in periods more or less regular? The more modern temporary stars did certainly exist before and do exist still. The star of 1866 may still be seen as an ordinary ninth magnitude star. So that of 1876 in Cygnus, which rose to the third magnitude, is still there as a star of about the fourteenth magnitude. To these probably may be added Tycho's star. The new star which makes the present WE depend so absolutely at every moment, and in every action upon the uniformity of nature, that any event which even appears to break in upon that uniformity cannot fail to interest us. Especially is this the case if a strange star appears among those ancient heavenly bodies, by the motions of which our time and the daily routine of life are regulated, and which through all ages have been to man the most august symbols of the un-year memorable, is indeed, so far as our changing. For, notwithstanding small alterations due to the accumulated effects of changes of invisible slowness which are everywhere in progress, the heavens, in their broad features, remain as they were of old. If Hipparchus could return to life, however changed the customs and the kingdoms of the earth might appear to him, in the heavens and the hosts thereof he would find himself at home. Only some nineteen times in about as many centuries have we any record that the eternal sameness of the midnight sky has been broken in upon by even the temporary presence of an unknown star; though there is no doubt that in the future, through the closer watch kept upon the sky by photography, a larger number of similar phenomena will be discovered. According to Pliny it was the sudden outburst into splendor of a new star in 130 B.C. which inspired Hipparchus to construct his catalogue of stars. Passing at once to more modern times we come to the famous new star of 1572, discovered by Tycho Brahe, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, which outshone Venus, and could even be seen as a bright object upon the sky by day. Its brilliancy, like that of the new stars before and since, was transitory; within a few weeks its great glory had departed from it, and it then waned on until, at last, it had fallen back to its original low estate, as a star invisible to the naked eye. The star of 1866, which on May 2 of that year burst forth as a star of the second magnitude in the Northern Crown, is memorable as the charts go, without descent. It may well be that its usual magnitude is below that which would bring it within our catalogues and charts. Visibility and invisibility in our largest telescopes are but expressions in terms of the power of the eye. The photographic plate, untiring in its power of accumulation, has brought to our knowledge multitudes of stars which shine, but not for us. The energy of their radiation is too small to set up the changes in the retina upon which vision depends. In a recent photograph of Argus, Mr. Russell, at Sydney, has brought into view a great crowd of stars, which until now have shone in vain for the dull eye of man. What, it will be asked, were the conditions under which so faint a star woke up suddenly into so great splendor? Such information as we have comes chiefly from that particular application of the spectroscope, by which we can measure motion in the line of sight. It is not too much to say that this method of observation has opened for us in the heavens a door through which we can look upon the internal motions of binary and multiple systems of stars, which otherwise must have remained forever concealed from us. By it we can, in many cases, see within the point-like image of a star a complex system of whirling suns, gigantic in size, and revolving at enormous speeds. A telescope fifty feet in diameter of aperture, even if it could ever be constructed, would fail to show close systems of stars which the prism easily lays open to our view. This method of using the spectroscope, first of these objects which was subjected which the writer first applied successfully to the searching power of the spectro-to the heavenly bodies some twenty-four scope. Two temporary stars have ap-years ago, is now too well known for it to peared since, in 1876, and in 1885. be necessary to say more than that the change of wave-length, or pitch, of the light shows itself in the spectrum by the lines being shifted; towards the blue for an approach, towards the red if the lightsource and the observer are moving from each other. Are these strange objects in reality new stars, the creations of a day, or but the transient outbursts into splendor of small stars usually invisible? May they be The substance of a discourse given at the Royal Institution on Friday evening, May 13, 1892. The stars, as seen from the earth, are |