Three months ago I wrote you a letter almost to a similar effect, but since then love has made me blind; with love in his heart a man closes his eyes to the truth; he becomes blind, and falls asleep in this blindness. When reason afterwards comes to his help, when love has become friendship, then he sees things in their true light. Now, I ask myself, what would have afforded me any consolation in this unhappy position? and have only the answer--Struensee's friendship and kind conduct towards me. The former no longer exists, for you treat me with rusticity and arrogance. No mortal man has ever before dared to behave to me in such a way. At the play table, in company and everywhere, you decide everything yourself, and are only satisfied when you have humiliated other men. You really should not have behaved thus to a friend who has ever loved you so dearly, and even at a time when all his companions and daily associates reproached him for his intercourse with you; and though it might injure him, always praised you, confessed his friendship for you to everybody, and formerly employed all his skill in persuading Holck and quieting Bernstorff. Ah, my friend, how dangerous life at court is to the character! Would to Heaven you had never made acquaintance with it! I cannot possibly comprehend why your fine feelings have not been aroused against the unworthy and disgraceful game of loo. If you were to be so unfortunate as to win a large sum from a friend or a man unable to afford it, you would not be satisfied till you had introduced a loo, a _campion_, or a _trente-et-un_, of a less dangerous character. For me it is a terrible reflection how much I have lost at these games in two months. There have been months in which I lost 1,800 dollars, and I am now obliged to sell some of my shares. And then, to be obliged to submit to reproaches for at times losing less than formerly! Could not a man blow out his brains for vexation at it? If you desired to make a concession to a feeling and cruelly-wounded mind, I have lately thought out a plan whose fulfilment would render me perfectly happy. It would be the greatest pleasure to me to be able to go to Paris, and live there decently. In order to realise this wish, I require a yearly revenue of 20,000 species.[12] The whole city daily expects to hear that the king has given you estates, and people mention Wallö and Wemmetofte, while others are said to be intended for me. It is considered strange that we counts have no landed property, and if the king gives you Wallö and Wemmetofte, which produce 21,000 species annually, and me the county of Rantzau, which produces 15,000, no one will be surprised at it, and I shall thus be enabled to make an annual trip to Paris, and reside for some months on my estates.