In the duchies, Reverdil heard a number of reports, some of which proved to be true, but the thing that struck him most, was the horror which the names of Struensee and Brandt inspired. Public hatred could not be more excited or more universal. "They had transformed the court into a poisonous cavern, and filled the provinces with disgraced and unhappy men: nothing was safe from their sacrilegious hands, and, ere long, the throne and the altar would succumb in their turn. They had overthrown a negotiation from which the country expected its safety for future ages; while under the pretext of reform they reduced thousands of families to want, they squandered the fruit of these savings in profusion and scandalous excesses. Not satisfied with displaying the most depraved habits, they turned morality into derision, and sought to corrupt it. Such horrible conduct brought down on the nation the chastisements of Heaven. And by what means had they seized the power and ensured impunity? By shamelessly dishonouring the king's bed, and introducing their vile posterity in the place of the pure blood of Oldenburg. After dishonouring the king, they held him besieged, and allowed no one to approach him, save their minions, in order to degrade him, and keep honest men from his familiarity. He was generally left alone with two boys, one a negro, and the other picked up in the streets." Some persons went further, and declared that their prince was ill-treated, and that he was governed by terror; others, that his reason was affected by drugs; the majority stated, however, that the absurd report of his imbecility was spread with sinister views against his person and the state. At Schleswig, Reverdil had a private interview with the Princess Dowager of Culmbach, sister of the Prince of Brunswick-Bevern, whose husband was Christian's great-uncle. She spoke with grief of the king's wretched state, which she stated to have grown much worse since the tour of 1767. His remarks, she said, having no sense or coherence, produced the worst idea of his usual society. This lady and the Prince of Hesse and his court talked infinitely to Reverdil about the scandal produced in the province by the bevy that followed the king. The queen travelling in a man's dress, the impertinences of the favourites, their familiarity with the king and queen, the ignoble air of the court, had caused them an astonishment from which they had not yet recovered.