"Si l'aveu de M. Struensee n'est point vrai, Madame, alors il n'y a pas de mort assez cruelle pour ce monstre qui a osé vous compromettre à ce point."
Caroline Matilda, who had been kept in utter ignorance of all that was taking place in Copenhagen, and probably had formed no idea of the deadly peril impending over her ex-cabinet secretary, fell back into her chair on hearing Schack Rathlau's fearful menace: honour and feeling contended powerfully in her breast, while the inquisitor eagerly tried to read the effect of these words of terror on the queen's countenance. At length, she regained some slight composure, and looking Schack firmly in the face, asked:
"Mais si j'avouais les mots de Struensee, pourrais-je sauver sa vie par là?"
Schack Rathlau—it is hard to say whether he believed in the probability of such a rescue, or merely in his legal arrogance triumphed at the palpable result of his menace—answered, with brazen brow:
"Surement, Madame, cela pourrait adoucir son sort de toute manière."
Saying this, he spread out the prepared document, containing the confirmation of Struensee's confession for the queen to sign.
"Eh bien, je signerai," the unfortunate lady said, as she seized the pen eagerly offered by Schack Rathlau, and appended her signature. She had hardly done so, however, when the consciousness of her want of caution and precipitation so affected her, that she sank back on the sofa in a fainting state.[68] The commissioners, however, hastened back to Copenhagen in great delight with the decisive document.
After ninety-two years posterity gazes with compassion on the historical picture of the royal martyr who, in the first bloom of youth, fettered through political motives to a husband, from whom all eyes were averted with feelings of anger and disgust, certainly committed no other crime than that of taking pleasure in the society of the only man who seemed her sincere friend, a man who had a heart for her connubial sufferings, who ever tried to alleviate them, and to whom alone she dared impart her wrongs. The confirmation of this truth must be left to the poor betrayed martyr herself. Still, for a proper comprehension of the cabal against her, one fact, speaking decidedly for the queen's innocence, may be quoted, in which a plausible explanation of Struensee's otherwise inexplicable conduct can be found:
"On avait dit à Struensee qu'il se sauverait en compromettant la reine, dont la conduite ne pouvait être l'objet d'une condamnation juridique, ou même d'un procès criminal, et on avoit ajouté à ce motif le menace de la torture."[69]