These forcible representations were strengthened by D. Joseph Hervas, son of the Marquis de Almenara; he was the brother-in-law of General Duroc, and the intimate friend of Savary, with whom he had travelled from Paris. Through these connexions he had obtained, if not a certain knowledge of Buonaparte’s intentions, such strong reasons for suspecting them, as amounted to little less; and he communicated his fears to Ferdinand’s counsellors, and besought them, while it was yet possible, to save him from the snare. These warnings were in vain. But though Ferdinand’s counsellors could not be made to apprehend the real danger, that poor Prince felt his first apprehensions return upon him with additional force; disappointed of seeing Buonaparte, disappointed of hearing from him, he compared this mortifying neglect with the conduct of Murat and the ambassador, and as if to relieve his mind by complaining, wrote to the tyrant in ♦APRIL 14.♦ a tone which confessed how entirely he was at his mercy. Elevated to the throne, he said, by the free and spontaneous abdication of his august father, he could not see without real regret that the Grand Duke of Berg and the French ambassador had not thought proper to felicitate him as King of Spain, though the representatives of other courts with which he had neither such intimate nor such dear relations, had hastened so to do. Unable to attribute this to any thing but the want of positive orders from his Imperial Majesty, he now represented with all the sincerity of his heart, that from the first moment of his reign he had never ceased to give the Emperor the most marked and unequivocal proofs of attachment to his person; that his first order had been to send back to the army of Portugal the troops which had left it to approach Madrid; and his first care, notwithstanding the extreme penury of the finances, to supply the French troops, making room for them by withdrawing his own from the capital.... He spoke of the letters he had written, the protestations he had made, the deputations he had sent. “To this simple statement of facts,” said he, “your Majesty will permit me to add an expression of the lively regret I feel in seeing myself deprived of any letters from you, particularly after the frank and loyal answer which I gave to the demand that General Savary came to make of me at Madrid in your Majesty’s name. That general assured me that your Majesty only desired to know if my accession to the throne would make any change in our political relations. I answered by reiterating what I had already written, and willingly yielding to this general’s intreaties that I should come to meet your Majesty to accelerate the satisfaction of being personally acquainted with you, I have in consequence come to my town of Vittoria, without regarding the cares indispensable from a new reign, which required my residence in the centre of my states. I therefore urgently intreat your Majesty to put