y to seeing her at "that terrestrial paradise which is called
Naples, where we shall enjoy perpetual spring and spend delightful days
in listening to the divine _Paesiello_. Do you know," he adds, "I passed
two hours of real delight this morning in simply contemplating your
elegant bedroom where only the elegant sleeper was missing."

"It is in _Crocelle_," he writes a little later, "that you will make
people happy by your presence, and where you will recuperate your
health, regain your gaiety, and forget an Irishman; and a holy Bishop,
more worthy of your affection, on account of the deep attachment he has
for you, will take his place."

In June, 1796, this senile lover writes, "In an hour I depart for
Germany; and, as the wind is north, with every step I take I shall say:
'This breeze comes perhaps from her; it has touched her rosy lips and
mingled its scent with the perfume of her breath which I shall inhale,
the perfume of the breath of my dear Wilhelmine.'"

But these days of dallying with her legion of lovers, of regal fetes and
pleasure-chasing, were brought to an abrupt conclusion when news came to
her at Venice that her "husband," the King, was dying, with the Royal
family by his bedside awaiting the end. Such news, with all its import
of sorrow and tragedy, set the Countess racing across the Continent,
fast as horses could carry her, to the side of her beloved King, whom
she found, if not _in extremis_, "very dangerously ill and pitifully
changed" from the robust man she had left. Her return, however, did more
for him than all the skill of his doctors. It gave him a new lease of
life, in which her presence brought happiness into days which, none knew
better than himself, were numbered.

For more than a year the Countess was his tender nurse and constant
companion, ministering to his comfort and arranging plays and tableaux
for his entertainment. She watched over him as jealously as any mother
over her dying child; but all her devotion could not stay the steps of
death, which every day brought nearer. As the inevitable end approached,
her friends warned her to leave Charlottenburg while the opportunity was
still hers--to escape with her jewels and her money (a fortune of
L150,000)--but to all such urging she was deaf. She would stay by her
lover's side to the last, though she well knew the danger of delay.

One November day in 1797 Frederick William made his last public
appearance at a banquet, with the Cou