On the following day, when the doors were being locked after the mid-day dinner (which was generally Peder’s task), and he was pulling to my innermost door, which opens inside, he put in his head and said, ‘Casset!’ She was standing beside the door, and appeared as if she had not rightly understood him, saying, ‘Peder spoke of some one who is in prison, but I could not understand who it is.’ I understood him at once, but also behaved as if I had not. No one knows but God what a day and night I had. I turned it over in my mind. It often seemed to me that it might be that they had seized him, although Cassetta was a subject of the King of Spain; for if treason is suspected, there is no thought given as to whose subject the man suspected may be. I lay in the night secretly weeping and lamenting that the brave man should have come into trouble for my sake, because he had executed my lord’s will, and had followed me to England, where we parted, I should say, when Petcon and his company separated us and carried me away.
I lay without sleep till towards day, then I fell into a dream which frightened me. I suppose my thoughts caused it. It came before me that Cassetta was being tortured in the manner he had once described to me that a Spaniard had been tortured: four cords were fastened round his hands and feet, and each cord was made secure in a corner of the room, and a man sometimes pulled one cord and sometimes another; and since it seemed to me that Cassetta never screamed, I supposed that he was dead, and I shrieked aloud and awoke. The woman, who had long been awake, said: ‘O God! dear lady, what ails you? Are you ill? You have been groaning a long time, and now you screamed loudly.’ I replied, ‘It was in my dream; nothing ails me.’ She said further, ‘Then you have had a bad dream?’ ‘That may well be,’ I answered. ‘Oh, tell me what you have dreamt; I can interpret dreams.’ I replied, ‘When I screamed I forgot my dream, otherwise no one can interpret dreams better than I.’ I thank God I do not regard dreams; and this dream had no other cause than what I have said. When the door was locked after the mid-day meal, the woman said of herself (for I asked no further respecting the prisoners), ‘There is no one imprisoned there; shame on Peder for his nonsense!’ I asked him who was imprisoned there, and he laughed at me heartily. ‘There is no one there, so let your mind be at peace.’ I said, ‘If my misfortunes were to involve others, it would be very painful to me.’
Thus matters went on till the middle of September, and then two of our servants were brought as prisoners and placed in arrest; one Nils Kaiberg, who had acted as butler, and the other Frans, who had been in our service as a lacquey. After having been kept in prison for a few weeks and examined they were set at liberty. At the same time two Frenchmen were brought as prisoners: an old man named La Rosche, and a young man whose name I do not know. La Rosche was brought to the tower and was placed in the witch-cell; a feather-bed had been thrown down, and on this he lay; for some months he was never out of his clothes. His food consisted of bread and wine; he refused everything else. He was accused of having corresponded with Corfitz, and of having promised the King of France that he would deliver Crooneborg into his hands.[72] This information had been given by Hannibal Sehested, who was at that time in France, and he had it from a courtesan who was then intimate with Hannibal, but had formerly been in connection with La Rosche, and probably afterwards had quarrelled with him. There was no other proof in favour of the accusation. Probably suspicion had been raised by the fact that this La Rosche, with the other young man, had desired to see me when I was in arrest in Dover, which had been permitted, and they had paid me their respects. It is possible that he had wished to speak with me and to tell me what he had heard in London, and which, it seemed to him, excited no fears in me. But as I was playing at cards with some ladies who had come to look at me, he could not speak with me; so he asked me whether I had the book of plays which the Countess of Pembroke had published.[E25] I replied, ‘No’. He promised to send it me, and as I did not receive it, I think he had written in it some warning to me, which Braten afterwards turned to his advantage.
However all this may be, La Rosche suffered innocently, and could prove upon oath that he had never spoken with my lord in his life, and still less had corresponded with him.[73] In short, after some months of innocent suffering, he was set at liberty and sent back to France. The other young man was confined in an apartment near the servants’ hall. He had only been apprehended as a companion to the other, but no further accusation was brought against him.[E26] At first, when these men were imprisoned, there was a whispering and talking between the prison governor and the woman, and also between Peder and her; the prison governor moreover himself locked my door. I plainly perceived that there was something in the wind, but I made no enquiries. Peder at length informed the woman that they were two Frenchmen, and he said something about the affair, but not as it really was. Shortly before they were set at liberty the prison governor said, ‘I have two parle mi franço in prison; what they have done I know not.’ I made no further enquiries, but he jested and said, ‘Now I can learn French.’ ‘That will take time,’ said I.
In the same month of September died Count Rantzow. He did not live to see the execution of an effigy, which he so confidently had hoped for, being himself the one who first had introduced this kind of mockery in these countries.[E27]
On October 9 our Princess Anna Sophia was betrothed to the Electoral Prince of Saxony. On the morning of the day on which the festivities were to take place I said to the woman, ‘To-day we shall fast till evening.’ For I thought they would not think of me, and that I should not receive any of the remains until the others had been treated, at any rate, to dinner. She wished to know the reason why we were to fast. I answered, ‘You shall know it this evening.’ I lay and thought of the change of fortune: that I, who twenty-eight years ago had enjoyed as great state as the Princess, should now be lying a captive, close by the very wall where my bridal chamber had been; thank God, that it afflicted me but little. Towards noonday, when the trumpets and kettledrums were sounding, I said, ‘Now they are conducting the bride across the square to the great hall.’ ‘How do you know that?’ said the woman. ‘I know it,’ I said; ‘my spirit tells me so.’ ‘What sort of spirit is that?’ she asked. ‘That I cannot tell you,’ I replied. And as the trumpets blew every time that a new course of dishes and sweets were produced, I mentioned it; and before they were served the kettledrums were sounded. And as they were served on the square in front of the kitchen, I said each time, ‘We shall have no dinner yet.’ When it was nearly three o’clock, the woman said, ‘My stomach is quite shrunk up; when shall we have dinner?’ I answered, ‘Not for a long time yet; the second course is only now on the table; we shall have something at about seven o’clock, and not before.’ It was as I said. About half-past seven the prison governor came and excused himself, saying that he had asked for the dinner, but that all hands in the kitchen were occupied. The woman, who had always entertained the idea that I was a witch, was now confirmed in her opinion.[74]
On the following day knights were dubbed, and each time when the trumpets blew I did not only say, ‘Now they have made a knight’ (for I could hear the herald calling from the window, though I could not understand what he said), but even who had been made a knight; for this I guessed, knowing who were in the Council who were not knights before; and because it was as I said, the woman believed for certain that I was an enchantress. I perceived this, as she put questions to me concerning things which I could not know, and to which I often gave equivocal answers. I thought perhaps that the fear she had that I could know what would happen might hinder her from entangling me with lies. Since then she whispered much less with the prison governor. She told of a person whom she regarded as a witch, whose power, however, consisted in nothing else than in the science of curing French pox, and causing the miscarriage of bad women, and other improprieties. She had had much intercourse with this woman.
Some time after the departure of the Electoral Prince it was determined that a wooden effigy should be subjected to capital punishment, and on the forenoon my chamber was opened, swept, cleaned, and strewed with sand.[75] When it was opened, towards noon, and the woman had been on the stairs, talking with the coachman, she came in, and walking up to my bed, stood as if startled, and said hurriedly, ‘Oh, Jesus! Lady, they are bringing your husband!’ The news terrified me, which she observed; for as she uttered it, I raised myself in the bed and stretched out my right arm, and was not able to draw it back again at once. Perhaps this vexed her, for I remained sitting in this way and not speaking a word; so she said, ‘My dearest lady, it is your husband’s effigy.’ To this I said, ‘May God punish you!’ She then gave full vent to her evil tongue, and expressed her opinion that I deserved punishment, and not she, and used many unprofitable words. I was quite silent, for I was very weak, and scarcely knew where I was. In the afternoon I heard a great murmuring of people in the inner palace square, and I saw the effigy brought across the street by the executioner on a wheelbarrow, and placed in the tower below my prison.
The next morning, at about nine o’clock, the effigy was wofully treated by the executioner, but no sound came from it. At the mid-day meal the prison governor told the woman how the executioner had cut off its head, and had divided the body into four quarters, which were then placed on four wheels, and attached to the gallows, while the head was exhibited on the town hall. The prison governor stood in the outer chamber, but he narrated all this in a loud tone, so that I might hear it, and repeated it three times.[E28] I lay and thought what I should do; I could not show that I made but little of it, for then something else perhaps would be devised to trouble me, and in the hurry I could think of nothing else than saying to the woman with sadness, ‘Oh, what a shame! speak to the prison governor and tell him to beg the King to allow the effigy to be taken down and not to remain as it is!’ The woman went out, and spoke softly with the prison governor; but he answered aloud and said, ‘Yes, indeed, taken down! There will be more put up; yes, more up;’ and kept on repeating these words a good while.
I lay silently thinking; I said nothing, but indulged in my own reflections. Sometimes I consoled myself, and hoped that this treatment of the effigy was a token that they could not get the man; then again fear asserted its sway. I did not care for the dishonour, for there are too many instances of great men in France whose effigies have been burnt by the executioner, and who subsequently arrived again at great honour.