[108] Doctor Johann Scherr, one of the most inveterate assailants of the queen's honour, does not hesitate to quote in connection with the "reader," the beautiful episode of Paolo and Francesca, in the fifth canto of the Inferno, ending with the line:
"Quel giorno più non vi legemmo avante."
[109] "Authentische Aufklärungen," p. 49.
[110] The reader will please bear in mind that the definitive exchange of the Oldenburg counties was not carried out till after Struensee's downfall. The original agreement was, that it should be delayed till the Grand Duke Paul attained his majority, and then he gave it his sanction.
[111] "Authentische Aufklärungen," pp. 49-50.
[112] According to Falckenskjold ("Mémoires sur Struensee," p. 109), Rantzau tried to thwart the Holstein exchange, and made a conspiracy with Count Görtz and Borck, the Prussian minister at Copenhagen, to overthrow the Danish government, and bring into power a party hostile to Russia. This plot having been foiled by Saldern, Rantzau was exiled to Glückstadt.
[113] Mr. N. W. Wraxall's informant did not mince matters when alluding to Rantzau, for he said: "He is a most infamous man, a liar, a coward, a man capable, from the meanest motives, of betraying his longest and best friends." Cautious Sir R. M. Keith also judged Rantzau correctly, and wrote about him in a letter to his father: "Count Rantzau, at this moment Lieutenant-General, Confidential Councillor, Knight of the Queen's Order, &c., would, if he had lived within reach of Justice Fielding, have furnished matter for an Old Bailey trial any one year of the last twenty of his life."
[114] According to Reverdil, Rantzau proposed at this time to make a league with Bernstorff, the man whom he hated most in the world, and upset the Traventhal cabal. Of course, he only meant it as a trap; but it gives a further clue to the man's character.
[115] "Authentische Aufklärungen," p. 263.
[116] In the first number of his Magazine, Struensee had published an epigram, pointed at this state of matters in Copenhagen:—