At last, on March 18, or two months after their arrest, came the turn of Colonel von Falckenskjold and Lieutenant-Colonel von Hesselberg to be examined. It has already been stated how scandalously these two gentlemen had been treated during their imprisonment at the main guard of the royal docks. Permission had been asked of Prince Frederick to have Falckenskjold removed to a more wholesome cell, but he refused it, and answered, with a jeering laugh, "A man who has fought with the Turks must be able to endure such a punishment." On the day of examination, the two prisoners were conveyed in litters to the citadel, but when they returned to prison they were allowed knives and forks, and freed from the constant presence of the officers of the guard in their room. On March 25, Major-General Gude and Count Struensee were confronted. On the following day, Admiral Hansen and Lieutenant Aboe made their statements, and as Etats-rath Willebrandt had been taken ill, he was examined in his house by a special commission. The investigation gradually assumed such immense proportions, that the sittings to examine the prisoners and witnesses could not be closed till the end of March, or for nearly two months and a half. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 61: Reverdil, p. 396.] [Footnote 62: A French petit maître, who protested against this weakness of Struensee, and in whose presence the discretion of his own countrymen in such matters was called in question, retorted: "Un Français l'aurait dit à tout le monde, et ne l'aurait avoué à personne."] [Footnote 63: That Struensee's contemporaries were of the same opinion, will be seen from what Baron von Bülow said to Mr. Wraxall on the subject:--"Had Struensee persisted pertinaciously in disclaiming any sort of criminal intimacy with the queen, should a contrary declaration have afterwards been made by him under torture, all the world would have said that such a confession was worth nothing; as having been extorted by the rack--as being the mere effect of pain. He would probably have then been put out of the way in prison, but to latest ages he would have been called a great man: nor could they then have touched Queen Matilda. She denied everything till she was shown Struensee's confession."] [Footnote 64: This confession still exists: indeed, I have a copy of it. But, however anxious I may feel to arrive at the truth, it is simply impossible to republish it. The few general hints I give in the text, and further on in the indictment of the queen, will suffice to indicate its disgusting character.]