Count Brandt, for his part, equally little regarded it as audacious, either when the affair occurred, or afterwards. For, just as he described it, in its full details, in presence of the commission, when nothing could induce him to do so but the innocence which, according to his opinion, lay in the whole affair, if the circumstances connected with it were taken into consideration in the same way, his open confession proves the confidence he placed in his innocence, as the affair could not be proved by witnesses; and the man who knows himself to be innocent is never criminal. This confession of Count Brandt, therefore, must, as the sole existing proof in the affair, be registered as credible, just as well in those passages where it speaks for his acquittal as where it serves to testify against him. From this deposition, which perfectly agrees with Count Struensee's statement before the commission on March 21, we see what in this strange affair speaks in Count Brandt's defence. We must, therefore, regard in the first instance the peculiar circumstance that his Majesty the King, for the sake of enjoying the pleasures of private intercourse, as people of equal rank carry it on together--although the "sweetness" of such intercourse usually shuns thrones--commanded that the man whom he selected as his intimate should not consort with him as the king, but as his equal, or as one friend with the other. If Count Brandt, through submissive respect, addressed him differently, the king answered sarcastically, "Most submissive knave," in order to remind him of the commands which had been given, that Count Brandt in daily intercourse should forget he was the king, just as one of his Majesty's ancestors, of most revered memory used to act, and at times remarked, "Now the king is not at home;" and, again, when the free conversation was to have an end, "The king is at home again now."[2] But his present Majesty never would be at home, so to speak, for the man he had admitted to his intimacy, but demanded equality.