"A proof, sire, that people do not grow old at your court," was Christian's flattering answer.
During the four days' stay at Fontainebleau, Struensee visited the Galerie des Cerfs, where the degenerate daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, after her abdication, had her lover Monaldeschi, whom she supposed to be faithless, beheaded by three disguised accomplices. He was induced to pay this visit by a dream, in which he saw an exalted lady, whose name he hardly dared confess. He had returned a long time from the tour, ere he told his brother of this dream, and how it urged him the next day to visit the gallery. "Everything is possible," was the consolatory answer Struensee received.
On November 3, the court celebrated the festival of St. Hubert, in which Christian took part with his suite. The guests arrived in one thousand five hundred carriages, and over three thousand hunters and lackeys were called out. Naturally, Madame de Flavecourt was among the fair Amazons.
On November 13, the Prince de Monaco gave the king a ball, at which the royal guest made the acquaintance of the Duchesse de Nevers, the ex-actress Marie-Anne Quinault, in the dance.
Whenever the king was not impeded by other festivities, he visited the Théâtre-Français, and for every performance sent the troupe 1,000 crowns, so that this amusement alone cost him 20,000 crowns. At the Grand Opéra he was most attracted by the celebrated prima donna Sophie Arnould, whom he requested to hear thrice as Théalire, in Rameau's Castor and Pollux. As a return for the pleasure which her singing and acting caused him, he sent her, through Count Holck, an ivory fan, for which he paid Boucher 2,000 livres.
When Christian visited the celebrated porcelain factory at Sèvres, he was shown an entire dinner service which Louis XV. intended to present to him, each piece decorated with the arms of Denmark. On Nov. 20, Christian was present at a sitting of the Academy, where Voisenon received him with a piece of verses, which I will spare the reader, and only say, they are full of the usual fulsome flattery. A resolution was then passed to hang up the king's full-length portrait in the great hall. On the 21st, Christian visited the Academy of Painting, when he was received by the Marquis de Marigny, brother of Madame de Pompadour, with an address, and on the same day the Sorbonne, where the same honours were paid him as to Peter the Great fifty years before.
A few days later, there appeared in the Mercure a versified panegyric on the king by a member of the Académie Française, M. de Bernis, ex-drawing-master, and afterwards archbishop, and favourite of the Pompadour, in which we read the tolerably notorious fact that other princes had visited the banks of the Seine before Christian. The unfortunate James Stuart was regretted; the pious Casimir forgotten; Peter I. admired; "mais vous, Chrétien, vous êtés adoré." In another set of verses, I find four lines which must not be passed over. I regret that I cannot trace their author; but they will be found in the "Almanach des Muses" for 1769:—
"Avec Louis le ciel vous a vu naître,
Pour éprouver un bonheur si doux: