CHAPTER XIV.
THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN.
1775.
We last saw the Queen with her hand on the door, as she bade farewell to Wraxall and wished him God-speed on his journey. “She never perhaps looked more engaging,” he wrote later, “than on that night, in that attitude and in that dress. Her countenance, animated with the prospect of her approaching emancipation from Zell—which was in fact only a refuge and an exile—and anticipating her restoration to the throne of Denmark, was lighted up with smiles, and she appeared to be in the highest health. Yet, if futurity could have been unveiled to us, we should have seen behind the door, which she held in her hands, the ‘fell anatomy,’[104] as ‘Constance’ calls him, already raising his dart to strike her. Within seven weeks of that day she yielded her last breath.”[105]
Then with a passion would I shake the world
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy.
King John, Act III., Scene iv.