“Your Majesty has given my wife and myself great pleasure by sharing in our family festival, and we beg your Majesty graciously to accept our respectful thanks. Your Majesty is right in giving the first place among the blessings for which I have to thank God to my domestic happiness, but happily in my house that happiness both for my wife and for myself includes the consciousness of your Majesty’s satisfaction; and the extremely gracious and friendly words of recognition contained in your Majesty’s letter do more to soothe disordered nerves than all the art of the physician. In looking back upon my life I have had such inexhaustible reasons to thank God for His unmerited mercies that I often fear I cannot remain so fortunate to the end. I regard it as a particularly happy dispensation of Providence that my vocation on earth should be the service of a master for whom I can work with pleasure and affection, as--under your Majesty’s guidance--the inborn loyalty of the subject need never fear to find itself in opposition to a hearty devotion to the honour and welfare of the Fatherland. May God continue to grant me strength, as well as will, to serve your Majesty in such a manner that I may preserve your Majesty’s satisfaction with my efforts, of which such a gracious evidence now lies before me in the shape of the letter of the 26th. The vase, which arrived in good time, is a truly monumental expression of royal favour, and is at the same time so substantial that I may hope that not the ‘fragments’ only, but the whole, will go down to my descendants as a proof of your Majesty’s gracious participation in our silver wedding. “The officers of the 54th Regiment, in a spirit of comradeship and friendliness, sent their band from Kolberg. Otherwise, as usually happens in the country, we were restricted to the more intimate family circle, with the exception that Motley, the former American Minister in London, a friend of my youth, chanced to be here on a visit. In addition to her Majesty the Empress, his Majesty the King of Bavaria and their Royal Highnesses Prince Charles and Frederick Charles, and H.I.H. the Crown Prince have honoured me with telegraphic congratulations. “My health is slowly improving. It is true I have done no work whatever, yet I hope to be able to report myself to your Majesty as fit for service in time for the Imperial visit. “v. Bismarck.” 2. “Varzin, _November 13, 1872_. “Most gracious King and Master,