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644 [Doc. 274.
THREE EXTRAORDINARY FACTS.
H.
THIEBAULT’S244 ACCOUNT.*
"I know not on what occasion it was, that conversing one
day with the Queen† on the subject of the celebrated vision
ary, Swedenborg, we [the members ofthe academy], particularly
M. Mérian245 and myself, expressed a desire to know what
opinion was entertained of him in Sweden. On my part,
I related what had been told me respecting him by Chamberlain
von Ammon,249 who was still alive, and who had been am
bassador from Prussia both to Holland and France. It was,
’That his brother-in-law [the Count de Marteville], ambassador
from Holland to Stockholm, having died suddenly, merchants
came to his wife, who was the sister of Baron von Ammon,
and demanded from her the payment of a bill for some pieces
of cloth which they had furnished, and which she remembered
had been paid in her husband’s life-time: that the widow, not
being able to find the receipt of the merchants, in whose
books the account had not been entered as paid, had been
advised to consult Swedenborg, who, she was told, could
converse with the dead whenever he pleased ; that she accord
ingly adopted this advice, though she did so less from self
interest than curiosity ; and at the end of a few days Sweden
borg informed her, that her deceased husband had received
the receipt for the money on such a day, at such an hour,
as he was reading such an article in Bayle’s Dictionary in
his cabinet; and that his attention being called immediately
afterwards to some other concern, he put the receipt into the
* This account is contained in " Souvenir de vingt ans de séjour à
Berlin" by Dieudonné Thiébault, Member of the Royal Academy of Berlin,
Vol. II, Paris, 1804 (pp. 254, et seq.). The first English translation of this
narrative appeared in the "Appeal," by the Rev. S. Noble (pp. 200 to 202).
It was transferred thence to the English and American editions of the
"Swedenborg Documents" collected by Dr. Im. Tafel.
Queen Louisa Ulrica, after the death of her husband Adolphus
Frederic, went to Berlin in the autumn of 1771, where she was received
in great state. She returned to Sweden in August, 1772. (See Fryxell
"Berättelser," &c., Vol. 43, p. 20.) Her interview with Thiébault and
other academicians took place during that time.
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