No thought of self, it will be noticed: Caroline Matilda entirely forgot the humiliation to which she had been exposed by Struensee's dastardly confession, and only evinced sincere compassion for his undeserved and barbarous fate. But she was ever thus: from the first moment to the last, she sacrificed herself for others. Of this, the following anecdote will serve as an affecting proof:—-- The queen, having so fatally experienced the vicissitudes of human grandeur, was not so deeply affected by her own disasters as to overlook the sufferings and misery of some state prisoners, doomed to perpetual exile in the Castle of Kronborg. Her Majesty's liberal beneficence was never more conspicuous than in this period of affliction and distress. She sent daily from her table two dishes to these forsaken objects of compassion, and out of a scanty allowance, she sent, weekly, a small sum to be distributed among them. The governor having requested her Majesty to withdraw her bounty from an officer who had been closely confined for some years past in a remote turret, debarred from all human intercourse, on suspicion of a treasonable correspondence with the agent of a northern power, who had enlisted, with the assistance of the prisoner, several Danish subjects for his master's service, the queen merely replied with the following line of Voltaire:-- "Il suffit qu'il soit homme et qu'il soit malheureux."[35] On one occasion, Caroline Matilda, conversing on the early commencement of her misfortunes, observed that, since she was born to suffer, she found some consolation in being marked out so soon by the hand of adversity. "I may possibly live," said her Majesty, "to see Denmark disabused with respect to my conduct: whereas my poor mother, one of the best women that ever existed, died while the load of obloquy lay heavy upon her, and went to the grave without the pleasure of a vindicated character."[36] Early in March, the charges against Caroline Matilda had been forwarded to London, and were there submitted to the opinions of the first lawyers, who, though consulted separately, all declared that the evidence brought forward was so far from being legal conviction, that it scarce amounted to a bare presumption of guilt: and they affirmed that they did not give credit to any of the facts as lawyers, but even found themselves obliged to disbelieve them as men. Upon this the court of St. James insisted that no sentence should be passed on her Danish Majesty, as the evidence against her was only presumptive, and very inconclusive.