Eventually Filosofow had to retire from Copenhagen and give place to another, but that was not yet. At this time he again warned Bernstorff that his days of power were numbered, unless he forthwith took steps to get Struensee removed from court. In this the envoy proved more far-sighted than the minister, for Bernstorff still considered it an incredible thing that his position could be seriously threatened. Yet within a month of the Russian’s warning the extraordinary favour which Struensee enjoyed with the King and Queen was further demonstrated.
The small-pox raged in Denmark in the spring of this year, 1770, and in Copenhagen alone twelve hundred children died of it. Struensee advised that the Crown Prince should be inoculated as a prevention. Inoculation had lately been introduced into Denmark, and Struensee’s suggestion was met with a storm of protest from some of the nobility, all the clergy and many of the doctors. Despite this Struensee carried his point; he inoculated the Crown Prince and watched over him in the brief illness that followed. Matilda herself nursed her son, and would not leave his bedside day or night. Her presence in the sick-room threw the Queen and the doctor continually together. Struensee was justified of his wisdom, for the Crown Prince not only escaped the small-pox, but soon rallied from the inoculation which it had been freely prophesied would cause his death. The doctor was rewarded with signal marks of the royal favour; he was given the title of Conferenzrath, or Councillor of Conference, which elevated him to the second class, and was appointed reader to the King, lecteur du roi, and private secretary to the Queen, with a salary of three thousand dollars. Ministers were amazed at the sudden elevation of the favourite, and began to ask themselves whither all this was tending.
Step by step as Struensee rose in honour Matilda gained in power. It was now apparent to all about the court that the Queen, and not the King, was the real ruler of Denmark. The Queen’s ascendency over her consort was so great that he did nothing without her approval. She in turn was guided by Struensee; but, whereas the Queen’s authority was seen by all, Struensee’s power at this time was only guessed at. His plans were not matured. The prize was within his grasp, but he was careful not to snatch at it too soon lest he should lose it altogether. Struensee now accompanied the King and Queen wherever they went, and, since his elevation to the second rank, dined at the royal table. Bernstorff seems to have thought that these privileges were all that Struensee cared about, and given money, a title and social position the doctor would be content, like Holck, with the royal favour, and leave politics alone. He little knew that Struensee in his heart despised these things; they were to him merely the means to an end, and that end was power. In his pursuit of power Struensee swept every consideration aside. Honour, duty and gratitude were nothing to him provided he gained his desire. In his belief in his destiny, his great abilities, his soaring ambition and complete heedlessness of every one save himself, this extraordinary man was a type of the uebermensch.
Struensee’s treatment of the Queen was an example of his utter unscrupulousness. Her condition when he came to court would have moved any man to pity. Her youth, her beauty and her friendlessness appealed to every sentiment of chivalry. The conditions under which Struensee made her acquaintance were the most intimate and delicate. He quickly gained her confidence; she trusted him from the first, and showed her gratitude by heaping favours upon him. Everything that came to Struensee in the next few years—honour, place and power—he owed to the Queen, and to her alone. Common gratitude, apart from any other consideration, should have led him to treat her honourably, but from the beginning he was false to her. He who came in the guise of a deliverer was really her evil genius. The young Queen was never anything to him but a means to an end. Adventurer and intriguer as he was, Struensee had marked Matilda down as his prey before he was admitted to her presence, and she fell an easy victim to his wiles. He made use of her as a shield, behind which he could work in safety. She was to be the buffer between him and his enemies; she was to be the ladder by which he would rise in power. To this end he tempted her with consummate art. He was first her confidential physician, then her devoted servant, then her friend and counsellor, and then her lover. This last phase was necessary to the success of his plans, and he deliberately lured his victim to her ruin in order that he might gain absolute mastery over her. Struensee gradually acquired over the Queen an almost mesmeric power, and she became so completely under his influence that she obeyed his wishes like an automaton. But it did not need hypnotism to cause a woman so tempted, so beset on every side as Matilda was, to fall. She had inherited from her father an amorous, pleasure-loving nature; she was of a warm, affectionate disposition, which had been driven back on itself by her husband’s cruelty and infidelities. Now, it was true, the King was anxious to make amends, but it was too late. Christian had greatly changed in appearance during the last year. Though little over twenty, he already looked like an old man, very thin, with sharp, drawn features and dead-looking eyes. Matilda, on the contrary, was in the full flood of womanhood; her blood flowed warmly in her veins, yet she was tied to a husband who, from his excesses, was ruined mentally and physically, and she was tempted by a lover in the full strength of his manhood, a lover who was both ardent and masterful, and whose strength of will broke down all her defences as though they had been built of cards. Moreover, her environment was bad—as bad as it could be. The atmosphere of the court was one of undisguised immorality; the marriage tie was openly mocked at and derided. The King had often told her to go her own way and let him go his, and now so far from showing any signs of jealousy, he seemed to take a delight in watching the growth of the intimacy between his wife and the confidential physician. He was always sending Struensee to the Queen’s chamber on some pretext or another, and the more Matilda showed her liking for Struensee’s society the more the King seemed to be pleased. That clever devil, opportunity, was all on Struensee’s side.
The Queen had no safeguards against temptation but those which arose from the promptings of her own conscience. That she did not yield without a struggle, that the inward conflict was sharp and bitter, there is evidence to prove.
O keep me innocent, make others great!
was the pathetic prayer she wrote on the window of the chapel of Frederiksborg[121] at a time, when in the corridors and ante-chambers of the palace Struensee was plotting his tortuous intrigues, all of which started from the central point of his relations with the Queen. It was he who wished to be great, she who was to make him great, and to this end he demanded the sacrifice of her innocence. The poor young Queen knew her peril, but she was like a bird fascinated by a snake. She fluttered a little, helplessly, and then fell.
[121] This window, with the Queen’s writing cut with a diamond on a pane of glass, was destroyed by the great fire at Frederiksborg in 1859.
The struggle was prolonged for some months, but the end was certain from the first. It was probably during the spring of 1770 that the flood of passion broke the Queen’s last barriers down. Her enemies afterwards declared that she entered on this fatal dalliance about the time of the Crown Prince’s illness. Certain it is that after Struensee had been appointed her private secretary, a marked change took place in Matilda’s manner and bearing. She is no longer a pathetic figure of wronged and youthful innocence, but appears as a beautiful and self-willed woman who is dominated by a great passion. There were no half measures about Matilda; her love for Struensee was the one supreme love of her life; it was a love so unselfish and all-absorbing, so complete in its abandonment, that it wrung reluctant admiration even from those who blamed it most.
Once the Rubicon crossed, reserve, discretion, even ordinary prudence, were thrown to the winds. Struensee’s object seems to have been to compromise the Queen as much as possible, so that she could not draw back. He was always with her, and she granted him privileges which, as Reverdil says, “would have ruined the reputation of any ordinary woman,” though it has been pleaded, on the other hand, that her indifference to appearances was a proof of her innocence. The Queen and her favourite were inseparable; he was admitted to her apartments at all hours; she took solitary walks with him in the gardens and woods, and she frequently drove and rode out alone with him; at balls and masquerades, at the theatre and the opera, he was always by her side; and in public and at court she followed him with her eyes, and did not attempt to disguise the predilection she had for him.