If the undertaking has failed through incorrect measures, or want of support, I will confess that I deserve all the reproaches that may be made me in consequence, as it is sufficient that it has not been carried out. The king alone can decide how far my advice has had an influence on his personal comfort, and the examination will prove how far the results have been injurious on the whole. At the beginning I was encouraged by my friends: but when it had grown too late to draw back, I lost them. If it be possible in such a situation as mine was, for a man to act without personal motives and impartially, I tried to do so, and so much the less did I believe that I should deserve the general hatred. On this account I was indifferent to all the menaces that were spread against me in public. I suspected even less, that I should be seriously accused of wishing to sustain myself against the opinion and will of the king, and of entertaining dangerous designs against his Majesty's person. As concerns the first charge, I do not know whether the king ever had the wish, or formed a resolution of discharging me. Everything I could employ to sustain myself in the king's favour was that I strove to be agreeable to his Majesty. Besides this, the influence of the queen was the only thing on which I could calculate. During the last half year, Count Brandt lost the king's confidence. Etats-rath Reverdil had no personal _liaisons_ with me, and would assuredly not have allowed me to support myself in an improper manner. I did not know page Schack personally, before he was attached to the king: the king said but little about Berger, and, besides, all the valets were still attached to his Majesty whom I found there, and they were under very slight or no obligations to me. These persons will know whether I asked of them information as to what the king said, or services to my advantage. If I had wished to prevent his Majesty from forming a speedy decision (about my dismissal) in consequence of insinuations made to him, I could only trust to the repugnance which such a thing would meet with in his mind, because there were countless opportunities, which I could neither prevent, nor attempted to prevent, and at least I ought to have made more certain of the sentiments of the persons who were about the king. Besides, the king had formerly dismissed several persons who were about him, and it would have been very easy for him to find means for doing the same with me, if he had wished it, and how could I have opposed it?