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618 [Doc. 271.
THREE EXTRAORDINARY FACTS.
we read (pp. 244, 247) as follows : "Some recent memorable
deaths. In April, 1760.7. Louis de Marteville, extra
ordinary ambassador of the General States of the United
Netherlands in Sweden, died April 25 in Stockholm, aged
fifty-eight years and eight months. He had been in that
country since 1752."
2. The same date is furnished by the Countess Schwerin,
the sister of Madame de Marteville, who states that "M. de
Marteville died in the month of April, 1760."
How soon after the death of M. de Marteville the story
of the lost receipt happened, cannot be determined with cer
tainty. Most authorities simply say " some time afterwards ;"
while the second husband of Madame de Marteville says "a year
afterwards," which would fix the date in April or May, 1761.
C.
With regard to the third fact it must have happened after
the second, since the Queen of Sweden told the Academicians
Thiébault and Merian (see Document 275), that "she had been
previously acquainted with the anecdote of the lost receipt. "
The precise date of this occurrence, however, Dr. Im. Tafel
derives from the following statement of Kant the philosopher
made during his investigation of these extraordinary facts
(Document 272), viz. that he had obtained his account from
"a Danish officer, his friend and former student, who was
present at the table of the Austrian Ambassador Dietrich
stein at Copenhagen, when he received a letter from Baron
von Lützow, the Mecklenburg minister in Stockholm, in which
this gentleman gave him an account of the story of the Queen
which had happened just then. " Kant wrote to his friend,
and asked him for further particulars, when he advised him
"to write to Swedenborg, as he himself was then about to
depart for the army under General St. Germain."
"This particular," says Dr. Tafel (p. 234 et seq.), “furnishes
an additional landmark by which to determine the date of
this occurrence. The aforesaid Count de St. Germain entered
into the service of Denmark in 1761 ; but only after the
Emperor Peter III had ascended the Russian throne on
January 5, 1762, was Denmark compelled to make warlike
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