ewellery in order to provide her lover with a
supper, was a bagatelle. She was the happiest young woman in Prussia.

Even what seemed to be a crowning disaster, fortune turned into a boon
for her. When news of this unlicensed love-making came to the King's
ears, he was furious. It was intolerable that the destined ruler of a
great and powerful nation should be governed and duped by a woman of the
people. He gave his nephew a sound rating--alike for his extravagance
and his amour; and packed off Wilhelmine to join her sister in Paris.

But, for once, Frederick found that he had made a mistake. The Prince,
robbed of the woman he loved, took the bit in his teeth, and plunged so
deeply into extravagant dallying with ballet-dancers and stars of the
opera that the King was glad to choose the lesser evil, and to summon
Wilhelmine back to her Prince's arms. One stipulation only he made, that
she should make her home away from the capital and the dangerous
allurements which his nephew found there.

Now at last we find Cinderella happily installed, with the King's august
approval, in a beautiful home which has since blossomed into the
splendours of Charlottenburg. Here she gave birth to a son, whom
Frederick dubbed Count de la Marke in his nurse's arms, but who was
fated never to leave his cradle. This child of love, the idol of his
parents, sleeps in a splendid mausoleum in the great Protestant Church
of Berlin.

As a sop to Prussian morality and to make the old King quite easy, a
complaisant husband was now found for the Prince's favourite in his
chamberlain, Herr Rietz, son of a palace gardener; and Frederick William
himself looked on while the woman he loved, the mother of his children,
was converted by a few priestly words into a "respectable married
woman"--only to leave the altar on his own arm, his wife in the eyes of
the world.

The time was now drawing near when Wilhelmine was to reach the zenith of
her adventurous life. One August day in 1786 Frederick the Great drew
his last breath in the Potsdam Palace, and his nephew awoke to be
greeted by his chamberlain as "Your Majesty." The trumpeter's daughter
was at last a Queen, in fact, if not in name, more secure in her
husband's love than ever, and with long years of splendour and happiness
before her. That his fancy, ever wayward, flitted to other women as fair
as herself, did not trouble her a whit. Like Madame de Pompadour, she
was prepared even to encourage such r