King at an ordinary court, when he could take leave of his Majesty. The haughty Russian replied that his health would not allow him to be present, and he left Copenhagen without taking leave of any of the royal family. Thus was Struensee avenged upon his enemy. [147] Gunning's despatch, Copenhagen, February 12, 1771. Gunning rightly regarded the Russian envoy's withdrawal from the Danish court as the result of an intrigue, which had its origin in the insult offered to Struensee a year before. "This intrigue," he wrote, "sprang originally from an insuperable disgust her Danish Majesty conceived against the person of Mr. Saldern and latterly against that of Mr. Filosofow.... The latter, though a man of great honour and worth, from a want of sufficient knowledge of the world, and from being perhaps too sensible of the splendour and power of the Empress, his mistress, studied not enough that refinement of behaviour which was to be expected in a public character, and through absence and inattention committed a piece of rudeness on a certain occasion to the Favourite which his self-love (as indeed the self-love of any other man might have done) induced him to impute to design. The wound rankled in his heart, and I will venture to say the sense of it was not confined to his own feelings. Her Danish Majesty was pleased to think much the worse of Mr. Filosofow for it. In short the affront was never forgiven, and the second Russian minister became equally, nay, more, obnoxious to the Queen than the first."[148] [148] Gunning's despatch, Copenhagen, April 4, 1771.