Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/207

XV ], and, after having delivered his various books, requested an audience with the Queen, and he then told Her Majesty something privately, which he was bound to keep secret from everyone else. The Queen thereupon turned pale and took a few steps backwards as if she were about to faint, but shortly afterward she exclaimed excitedly, 'That is something which no one else could have told except my brother!'

"The assessor expressed regrets at having gone so far, when he noticed Her Majesty's intense consternation.

"On his way out he met Councilor von Dalin in the antichamber and requested him to tell Her Majesty that he would follow up the matter still further, so that she would be comforted thereby.

" 'But I shall not venture to do so,' he added to me [Count Tessin] 'until after some ten or twelve days; for if I did it before it would have the same terrifying effect, and perhaps still more intensely upon Her Majesty's mind.'

"However remarkable this may appear," Tessin wrote, strictly for himself, "as well as other things which he said to me during an hour and a half, I nevertheless feel all the more safe in putting it down as Her Majesty's obvious consternation is unanimously testified to by all those who were in the room, and among others by Councilor Baron Carl Scheffer. [In another account, which Swedenborg gave to General Tuxen of the same affair (see p. 192) Tuxen asked if anyone else heard what the Queen said, and Swedenborg answered that at least the King and Baron Scheffer were near enough to hear her.]

"The Queen also tells it in very nearly the same way, adding that she was still in doubt as to what to believe, but that she has put Assessor Swedenborg to a new proof, if he managed in this she would be convinced he knew more than others.

"Perhaps this was what he referred to when mentioning his intention to say more in ten or twelve days.

"For all that we can see," was Tessin's conclusion, "this statement is so clear and confirmed by so many testimonials, that it must needs be regarded as reliable."

There is no record, apparently, of Swedenborg's having been a second time to see the Queen about this matter. However, when in later days she was asked whether it was true that he had told her