As my Brother was most in my anxieties, I asked, If it
concerned him? Bulow shrugged her shoulders, answering, 'I don't know
at all!' A moment after, the Queen gave Good-night; and got into her
carriage with me,--speaking no word all the way to the Schloss; so
that I thought my Brother must be dead, and I myself took violent
palpitations, and Sonsfeld, contrary to orders, had at last to tell
me in the course of the night." Poor Wilhelmina, and poor Mother of
Wilhelmina!

The fact, of Arrest, and unknown mischief to the Prince, is taken for
certain; but what may be the issues of it; who besides the Prince have
been involved in it, especially who will be found to have been involved,
is matter of dire guess to the three who are most interested here.
Lieutenant Katte finds he ought to dispose of the Prince's effects which
were intrusted to him; of the thousand gold Thalers in particular, and,
beyond and before all, of the locked Writing-desk, in which lies the
Prince's correspondence, the very Queen and Princess likely to be
concerned in it! Katte despatches these two objects, the Money and the
little Desk, in all secrecy, to Madam Finkenstein, as to the surest
hand, with a short Note shadowing out what he thinks they are: Countess
Finkenstein, old General von Finkenstein's Wife, and a second mother to
the Prince, she, like her Husband, a sworn partisan of the Prince and
his Mother, shall do with these precious and terrible objects what, to
her own wise judgment, seems best.

Madam Finkenstein carries them at once, in deep silence, to the Queen.
Huge dismay on the part of the Queen and Princess. They know too well
what Letters may be there: and there is a seal on the Desk, and no key
to it; neither must it, in time coming, seem to have been opened, even
if we could now open it. A desperate pinch, and it must be solved.
Female wit and Wilhelmina did solve it, by some pre-eminently acute
device of their despair; [Wilhelmina, i. 253-257.] and contrived to get
the Letters out: hundreds of Letters, enough to be our death if read,
says Wilhelmina. These Letters they burnt; and set to writing fast as
the pen would go, other letters in their stead. Fancy the mood of these
two Royal Women, and the black whirlwind they were in. Wilhelmina's
despatch was incredible; pen went at the gallop night and day: new
letters, of old dates and of no meaning, are got into the Desk again;
the Desk closed, without mark of injury, and shoved aside