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"On the contrary, let us await him here without a word of reproach upon his return. This will touch his tender heart which we must work upon, if we would get him into our power, for to us he must belong. Fill our glasses with the sparkling wine, and drink to the contract with Wilhelmine Enke."
Wilhelmine Enke had passed the day in great anxiety and excitement, and not even the distraction of her new possession had been able to calm the beating of her heart or allay her fears. Prince Frederick William had arrived early in the morning, to bid her farewell, as he was to march in the course of the day with his regiments from Potsdam.
Do you not know who alone is disinterested and faithful? who has never seen in me the prince, the future king only the beloved one, the man one who has never wavered, never counted the cost? that you are, Wilhelmine Enke, therefore we are inseparable, and you have not to fear that I can ever forsake you, even if I am sometimes entangled in the magic nets of other beautiful women.
I placed myself near her, and said: "Shall we play 'Enke' to-day?" She started slightly, and got up. "Be careful not to say 'Du' to each other now," she whispered. Now I had not said "Du" at all. I walked away. Another hour passed. The day was getting long; I would have rowed home alone long before if there had been a third boat; Asop lay tied up in the hut, and perhaps he was thinking of me.
While the lonely king implored the spirits of his friends, to brighten with their presence the quiet, gloomy apartment at Sans-Souci, the sun shone in full splendor at Charlottenburg the sunshine beaming from the munificence of Frederick. Wilhelmine Enke had passed the whole day in admiring the beautiful and tasteful arrangement of the villa.
In this beautiful equipage drove the Princess of Prussia; at her side, in a miserable linen-covered wagon, crouching far in the corner, sat Wilhelmine Enke, the rival of the princess; near her, her two children, whose existence condemned her, and stamped her life with dishonor.
"You could not do it, sire you could not," cried Wilhelmine Enke, "for you would also send there the honor and the name of your successor to the throne." "What do you mean?" cried the king, furiously. "I mean, your majesty, that the prince has holy duties toward me. I am the mother of that child!"
She is well aware that I married her only at the command of my royal uncle, and she accepted me almost with detestation, for they had related to her the unhappiness of my first marriage, and the happiness of my first love! She has learned the story of my first wife, Elizabeth von Braunschweig, and that of my only love, Wilhelmine Enke!
"Surely you could not injure or grieve me more, and therefore I am not a little surprised that the pious Fathers could so carelessly word their oaths. You have sworn to renounce your affection to and separate from Wilhelmine Enke; so it follows that the Invisibles only demand that you give up my name, not myself, and that is easily changed, and my dear prince will not become a perjurer."
I have listened to you unto the end, and I regard your invectives and accusations as not worthy of a reply or justification, and I laugh at your menaces. But I warn you, Wilhelmine Enke, defy not the Invisibles, and offend not the Holy Fathers, by your continued resistance. Turn, misguided child of sin turn while there is yet time!
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