Note 42 — Chapter V · DEPARTURE OF THE QUEEN.
Reading edition
The following interesting account, which I have found in a pamphlet published under the title of "Sittliche Frage," was not sufficiently authenticated to be embodied in my text. Still I do not think it should be passed over, as it affords an idea of the sentiments of the queen's party.
Keith laid before the king the letter of separation for his signature, which the king was about to sign without reading. "No, no, your Majesty," the envoy said, "read it first. It concerns you. It is the separation between yourself and your consort, which the court of England solicits for the reasons given." The king cried in confusion, "What! I am to lose my wife? State it even in writing? No, I cannot. I love and long for her again. Where are Struensee and Brandt? I long for them too." "Your Majesty," Keith replied, "they have been quartered, your Majesty signed their sentences yourself, and as it is also wished to condemn the queen to death, my court demands her back." The king became inconsolable. He asked for the queen and his two counts, and dismissed the envoy.
That England imposed weighty points on the Danish court, and demanded all possible satisfaction for the trick played the queen regnant, is evident from the following facts:—The queen is still called Queen of Denmark, even by the Danish court; her children by the king are brought up royally, and called the crown prince of the Danish kingdom and the king's daughter. When she set out from Kronborg for Celle, all royal honours were granted (which could not have been the case had the fabulous intercourse been true), and a pension of 30,000 rix-dollars is to be paid her annually.
The king now lives very sadly, and his days pass away in melancholy. He still exclaims, "My wife, my wife! she has been torn from me. I ask for her again. My ministers, my Struensee and Brandt, where are they? They have been condemned to death. They have passed over into eternity, and I am left desolate."