Note 22 — Chapter III
Reading edition
During Queen Louisa's life Frederick is supposed to have only once gone astray with an Italian prima donna, the Scalabrini. The queen-mother, however, had him supplanted in the lady's favour by Captain Detlev von Ahlefeldt, a groom in waiting. When the king heard of it he was furious, kicked the singing woman out at a moment's notice, and shut the unhappy captain up for life in the fortress of Munkholm. The queen forgave her truant, and they lived happy ever after, as the fairy stories say. No one cared, as it seemed, for mamma's unhappy victim.