The chancellor, Herr von Wegnern, communicated to me on the 27th ult. the letter which he received from your Excellency. This letter contains the first news I received since Nov. 7th, of last year, respecting the portrait by which our most gracious monarch intended to gratify a poor invalid: that your letter was extremely gratifying and consoling to me, is natural. It created the first ray of hope; it has unceasingly occupied me; it even gave rise to some kind of superstition, and I attributed my good health the whole month of December to the vivid hopes it had raised. This prospect of the restoration of my health, I thought, gave me hope of being able to indulge for a longer period in the pleasure which the dear picture of the “most highly revered one, affords me. I, however, do not indulge in the hope of this restoration,” since I find my own experience as frequently opposed to as in harmony with that of others, and the result of my reflections on this obscure subject, is simply this, that it is one of the innumerable questions, which are beyond the veil that separates us both from the great secrets of our own nature, and from those which nature in general interposes between first causes and perceptible phenomena. I did, however, excuse the rising superstition by recalling the indisputable truth, that vivid agreeable effects on the mind or soul react upon the body; but why did the reaction not endure in my case? Be this as it may, it is a fact that the portrait of the King always moved before my eyes during my restless nights; I hoped every day would bring me news of it. I perfectly understand that a care for the well-being of millions of subjects, equally dear to the heart of the monarch, rules the ruler himself and compels him to abandon, under the pressure of the moment, the arrangement of a succession of innumerable interests centring in him; I also fully understand that the King, although he is no more unmindful of the honors he intends bestowing than of those he has already awarded, has not been able to fix the exact moment of conferring the intended benefit upon me. I also know beyond all doubt, that I am standing upon a mine which may at any time explode, and that to-day has no power over to-morrow. I have, therefore, thought best to conceal entirely within my own breast the hope of possessing the dearest of pictures, and to betray nothing, even to my wife and daughters, until further news of the actual approach of the hoped-for object shall render me as secure in the certainty as the case permits. I have the utmost horror against the propagation of anything the truth of which maybe subjected to doubts by succeeding events; knowing from sad experience that it may not be sustained by the next moment, for which falsehood and misrepresentation are greedily lying in wait. I fear that the premature spreading of such news, moreover, may imply a sort of coercion (sit venia verbo) on the King.