The next step was to notify this treaty to the actual government of Spain. Accordingly Ferdinand addressed a letter to the Regency, being the first communication which he had been permitted to hold with his own country since his entrapment. “Divine Providence,” he said, “which in its inscrutable wisdom had permitted him to pass from the palace of Madrid to that of Valençay, had granted to him the blessings of health and strength, and the consolation of never having been for a moment separated from his beloved brother and uncle, the Infantes, Don Carlos and Don Antonio. They had experienced in that palace a noble hospitality; their way of life had been as agreeable as it could be under such circumstances; and he had employed his time in the manner most suitable to his new condition. The only intelligence which he had heard of his beloved Spain was what the French gazettes supplied; these had given him some knowledge of the sacrifices which the nation had made for him; of the magnanimous and unalterable constancy manifested by his faithful vassals, of the persevering assistance of England, the admirable conduct of its general-in-chief, Lord Wellington, and of the Spanish and allied generals who had distinguished themselves. The English ministry had publicly declared their readiness to admit propositions of peace, founded upon his restitution; nevertheless, the miseries of his kingdom still continued. He was in this state of passive but vigilant observation, when the Emperor of the French spontaneously made proposals to him, founded upon his restitution, and the integrity and independence of his dominions, without any clause which would not be compatible with the honour and glory and interest of the Spanish nation. Being persuaded that Spain could not, after the most successful and protracted war, conclude a more advantageous peace, he had authorized the Duque de S. Carlos to negotiate in his name with the Comte de Laforest, whom the Emperor Napoleon had nominated as plenipotentiary on the part of France; and he had now appointed the Duque to carry this treaty to the Regency, in proof of the confidence which he reposed in them, that they might ratify it in their usual manner, and send it back to him after this necessary form without loss of time. How satisfactory,” he concluded, “is it for me to stop the effusion of blood, and to see the end of so many evils! and how do I long to return and live among a people, who have given the universe an example of the purest loyalty, and of the noblest and most generous character!”