Her Majesty has commanded me to declare that she does not desire them to be recalled and examined in my presence. But as I also have her commands to investigate the nature of this evidence and what it goes to prove, I am obliged to make some prefatory remarks.
It is a remarkable fact that not one of the witnesses examined alleges any other motive for the first suspicion against the queen but the town scandal which they had heard. It was not till it became universal that it was mentioned to the queen. As most of the witnesses were constantly about the queen's person, and yet, in her intercourse with and behaviour toward Struensee, found no reason to believe anything insulting to her, it is clear that the conduct of the queen must have been irreproachable, even at the time when apprehension existed. Everybody knows how deceptive reports are. Such a thing is often founded on nothing; and through its universal propagation alone acquires a certain strength and credibility. But however slippery its path may be, it leaves behind, even with the hardest of belief, the most cautious and best disposed, a suspicion which places the conduct of the persons affected by the report in a perfectly new and different light. The reason for the rumour may be true; the curiosity to acquire a certainty about it attracts attention to things which otherwise would be most innocent, but are now seriously weighed, and if anything equivocal is detected, a verdict is at once formed without any further investigation. It was the same with the witnesses in this case; for, although prior to the rumour they had no cause to suspect the queen, they no sooner learnt its existence than they discovered new evidence of it at every step.
This remark is the more important, as the chamber-people of the queen, after they had been informed of the rumour, did not observe those precautions which they should have done.
Instead of at once informing her Majesty, they made all sorts of investigations; and although they found no real criterion which could have confirmed the rumour, their prejudices were sufficiently active to make them regard everything with suspicion.
When her Majesty learnt this fact, she doubtless regarded it as a want of the fidelity they ought to have displayed, and of the good opinion they should have entertained of her. She consequently removed the witnesses from her immediate presence, and partly lost that perfect confidence which she had formerly placed in them. This annoyed the chamber-people, and naturally caused them to judge the actions of her Majesty even more sharply than before.
In the evidence of Frau Schiötte, we find two special instances of this: first, when she pretends that her Majesty's amendment lasted a fortnight after the warning, but that then the thing grew again worse than ever, although Frau Blechinberg says that she noticed nothing suspicious for some weeks after the time; and again, when Frau Schiötte employs the expression that her Majesty gave herself a great deal of trouble about the bolt of a door at Frederiksberg which would not fasten. That the queen had the bolt mended may have been caused by very innocent motives, especially as Frau Schiötte herself confesses that the chamber-people had no orders to close the bolt; but the expression that the queen "gave herself a deal of trouble," or "was wild about it," is excessively improper, and displays an animosity from which a witness ought to be exempt.
As her Majesty, therefore, had such keen observers in those who were about her person, it is not surprising that they should draw different conclusions, which served in confirmation of the ideas by which they were already preoccupied. No innocence is conceivable which would not succumb under such suspicious examination, and the law has foreseen the consequences of this, and recognised the fairness that every one should be safe in his own house and among his own servants. Hence it orders that "such witnesses should not be heeded."[80]
If we now ask what the facts are, by which an improper intimacy carried to extremes between the queen and Count Struensee can be proved from the evidence of the witnesses, the answer is—None. That the queen showed the count favour and confidence, cannot be denied. But who ever saw or heard that they went beyond the limits of honour? Where is the man who is able to say that the queen has broken the fidelity which she owed to her consort, or can mention a single fact which would prove the certainty of such a crime? And does not the silence of all about any convincing act prove the truth of maid Bruhn's answer to question 6, "that she never witnessed any impropriety on the part of the queen"?
Regarded generally, all the witnesses appeal to their own acts. They say, they concluded that Struensee was a long time with the queen, because they were not summoned; they fancied that the queen and Struensee were on familiar terms. But on what are these suppositions founded, except on rumour, and the power which it possessed over the imagination?