I had already heard with sorrow from the gifted Princess von Wittgenstein, that you, noble friend, suffered more than usually. Receive me with indulgence on Saturday, about 10 o’clock, in spite of my long absence, and of my inconvenient trilogy, Berlin, Tegel, and Potsdam. I shall then also bring you a few lines of thanks to your cousin, the Imperial Brazilian Chargé d’Affaires in Madrid. His history, founded upon archival monuments, seems to become of great importance; but what a strange missive without adding the first pages, and notes also without a beginning.[75] I doubt of my ever catching those commencements in my cosmic disorder. As I spent almost an hour alone with the Prince of Prussia yesterday, I shall be able to tell you something not uninteresting, although not at all decisive. The Prince, whom I take to be veracious, assures me of having always asserted, faithful to his principles, that war would probably have been avoided, if Prussia and Austria had from the first co-operated actively with the Western powers against Russia. They answered in St. Petersburg that the Emperor would not have yielded, but this the Prince doubted.... With old attachment, yours, A. V. HUMBOLDT. THURSDAY. You will explain to me orally the mythological name of Sorocaba.[76] Varnhagen narrates in his diary, under date of August 11th, 1855:—“About 1 o’clock Humboldt came, looking well, quite vigorous, in fresh and lively spirits; when he made a worse impression a short time ago, as Dirichlet thought, it was the effect of sickness, and is passed now. First, he spoke of the book of my cousin, which he praised, for which he thanks him (in a letter). The expression Sorocaba I cannot explain to him. Humboldt was but recently made a knight of the great Brazilian order, on account of an arbitration between Brazil and Venezuela, respecting a large tract of land. ‘Formerly they intended, in Rio de Janeiro, to arrest me as a dangerous spy, and to send me back to Europe, the order drawn up for the purpose is still shown there as a curiosity; now they make me an arbitrator! I, of course, decided for Brazil, because I wanted the large order; the Republic of Venezuela has none to confer!’ These words, spoken in the gayest irony, I interrupted with the exclamation, ‘How times change!’ ‘Yes; the order of arrest, and then the insignia of the great order!’ ‘Oh, no,’ I replied, ‘I did not think of this personal affair, but of the historical; formerly the pope was the general arbitrator!’ Humboldt saw the last volumes of the life of Stein on my table, and expressed his displeasure on the external arrangement, the meagreness of the text, and the unsifted character of this book; he thought that the gold snuff-box, with brilliants, which the King had already sent to Pertz for these volumes, was entirely too much. Injustice, crying and mean, perpetrated by Stein against old Prince