While the king and queen were at Traventhal, Rantzau was introduced to them, and had the honour of receiving a visit from them at Ascheberg, where he did everything in his power to divert his exalted guests. Each day had its special festivities and amusements: music, hunting, fishing, sailing on the lake, and rustic sports, which, more than any other pastime, pleased the imbecile king. The queen, fully satisfied with the respect that Count Rantzau had shown her, and little dreaming of the share her attentive host was to have in her fall, gave him a superb snuff-box set with brilliants, which had cost her husband a thousand guineas in London. All the efforts made to amuse Christian met with but slight success, for he seemed to be sunk in thought, and everything that went on around him, the numerous changes of situation and persons, no longer produced any interest for him. The effects of former excesses on his frail constitution became but too evident, while his mental abilities only shone forth now and then in the shape of satire. One day, at Traventhal, when Christian had been bothered with signing the commissions of a number of new conference councillors, and the matter was talked about at dinner, the king turned to his favourite dog, Gourmand, lying at his feet, and said, "Can you bark?" And when the dog, on whose paws Christian trod, began barking and growling, his master said, "Well, as you can bark, you can be a conference councillor too;" after which he rose from his seat, and proposed the health of the new Councillor Gourmand, to which the whole court responded, in accordance with etiquette. Not satisfied with this, the king insisted on the same salary being paid Gourmand as his human colleagues. This joke was a bitter pill for Struensee's pride, for the Holck faction continually addressed the dog as _Conferentie Raad_, in mockery of the favourite's new-horn honours.