Caroline-letters tended to be full of talk about trees she had climbed, squirrels who had admitted her into their circle of trust, boys who had disgusted her, chess-games she had played via post against Leibniz, dreadful books she’d studied, wonderful books she’d read, the weather, logarithms, and timeless disputes among domestic animals. They told Eliza nothing about Johann Georg IV, about Dresden, or why they had moved to Pretzsch, or how Eleanor was doing. And so Eliza had assumed what would have been the case in France, namely that Pretzsch was some outlying château of the Saxon court, as Marly was to Versailles, and that Eleanor, for whatever reason, favored it over life in the capital. And so ever since the spires of Wittenberg had receded from view aft, Eliza had been scanning the hilltops above the river for some new Barock palace, with terraced gardens leading down to a stone quay along the river, the Electoral household drawn up in formation to greet her, perhaps a consort playing music, the mother on the arm of her strapping husband the Elector, and the little girl. Her only concern had been that, tired as she was, she might not be equal to the magnificence of it all. Instead, this: above, a few leaning turrets and slumping eaves discernible through overgrown trees, a mud trough winding down to the ruined dock where the two women were madly waving. It was so at odds with Eliza’s expectations that it made almost no impression on her.