Adieu, my dear Baron. I ask your recollection and regard, and promise a bountiful return. Ever yours, THE PRINCESS LIEVEN. 171. VARNHAGEN TO HUMBOLDT. BERLIN, _January 27th, 1856_. With joyful thanks I profit by your Excellency’s goodness in sending me the copy of your beautiful response to the deputies of the city of Berlin. Were it not presumption to praise, where praise has already become a habit and a superfluity, I should say that the speech is as full of sterling merit as of noble intention. The brightest passage, to my mind, is the (I hesitate whether to call it felicitous or masterly) allusion to the King, in terms so dignified and delicate, so warm and graceful; and every pure heart must at once acknowledge, that in this connexion the remark was singularly appropriate and beautiful. In your Excellency’s last favor, the expression, “Madame de Quitzow,” at first puzzled me a good deal. But I may boast of having solved the riddle by the power of the head—as the Jews say, where we speak of cudgelling our brains—and am constrained to acknowledge that the little sally is not only a good joke, but proportionably a mild measure of punishment. The Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar desired to see me; but I found myself chained down to my rheumatic complaint. With faithful reverence and most grateful devotion, unalterably your Excellency’s most obedient, VARNHAGEN VON ENSE. 172. HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. BERLIN, _January 28th, 1856_. My far from dormant ambition has been abundantly gratified by the grateful praise bestowed by the great master of our language (to avoid the expression rhetorician), upon my manner of speaking of the King, and my relations with him. In praising that with which the party praised is but scantily supplied, we point him to the honorable road, and justify ourselves before the people. A man of the woods, who is supposed to have been tamed at court, is in need of such justification. Madame Quitzow, whom I could not sooner obtain from the King, I now repose in your hands, as your own. Our former minister, General Thiele, was firmly persuaded that the Guizots of the neighborhood of Montpellier were disguised remnants, softened in pronunciation, Frenchified and Protestantized, of the emigrated Quitzows[78] from Langkloder. And your poor excellent Dora, who pities all your friends for the sufferings she knows so well how to alleviate! Give her my kindest regards. Your faithful A. HUMBOLDT. AT NIGHT.