he readily lent himself to pandering to the King's weaknesses in this respect. Struensee had no sense of morality; he was a law unto himself, and his freethinking views on this and other questions were peculiarly acceptable to his royal master. Struensee had a certain measure of success in England, and through the King of Denmark's favour, he was invited to many entertainments to which his position would not otherwise have entitled him. His reputation for gallantry was hardly inferior to that of Holck. It is stated that Struensee fell violently in love with an English lady of beauty and fortune, and his passion was returned. He wore her miniature next his heart, and it was found upon him after his death--but this rests on hearsay. What is certain, during his sojourn in England, is that he received honorary degrees, from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; and he took riding lessons at Astley's, and became an expert horseman. Struensee accompanied the King to Paris, and took part in the pleasures of that gay capital. Struensee visited the gallery at Fontainebleau where Queen Christina of Sweden, after her abdication, had her secretary and favourite Monaldeschi murdered, or, as she regarded it, executed. Soon after he returned to Denmark Struensee told his brother that he had been induced to visit the gallery by a dream, in which there appeared before him the vision of an exalted lady whose name he hardly dared to mention. He meant, of course, Queen Matilda. His brother heard him in ominous silence, and Struensee, after waiting some time for an answer, quoted his favourite maxim: "Everything is possible". In January, 1769, Struensee returned to Altona in the King's suite. The place and time had now come for him to take leave of his royal master, and retire once more into the obscurity of a country doctor--a prospect which, after his sojourn at glittering courts, filled him with dismay. But Bernstorff and Schimmelmann, whose good offices he had assiduously courted during the tour, spoke on his behalf to the King, and Christian appointed Struensee his surgeon-in-ordinary, with a salary of a thousand dollars a year, and as a mark of his royal esteem gave him a further five hundred dollars. Struensee remained at Altona for a few weeks after the King had left for Copenhagen to sell his house, pay his debts and wind up his affairs. He visited his parents at Schleswig to receive their congratulations and take leave of them. His father shook his head doubtfully over his godless son's rapid rise in the world, and his mother warned him against the perils and temptations of the wicked court. But Struensee, flushed with his success, was in no mood to listen to their croakings. He believed in himself, and he believed in his destiny. "Everything is possible," he said. The desire of his youth was gratified before he had arrived at middle age. He was going to Copenhagen, and what was more, to court; the future was in his own hands.