"Nevertheless, they were not so successful with General Loison; he was too wary for them, made fun of them in secret, and only cared for the presents that were partly given to him and partly promised. They had offered him a costly sword as a present, which he accepted graciously. The sword was ordered and made at Frankfort, but it only arrived after Loison had left the government. Now they were sorry for this too hasty offer, and they had no desire to send him the sword, as they had not found that complaisance in him which they expected. All this courtly _empressement_ became so repugnant to Loison, that he himself prevailed on Napoleon to recall him to the army. "With his weaker successor, Canuel, it succeeded better. My worthy friend the president, Von Vinke, was the first to experience it. An incidental expression thrown out by him in a remonstrance, 'that otherwise he could no longer carry on his office,' was readily laid hold of as signifying a resignation, and he was dismissed from his post. "In order to overcome my grief at things that could not be altered, I endeavoured to find distraction in a great work. The yet incomplete state of the laws of mortgages in the county of Muenster, offered me the handiest and best material I devoted myself to this tedious work with the greatest zeal, and with the assistance of many referendaries, I accomplished the registry of all the title deeds which had to be recorded in the mortgage book of the government of Muenster. Thus I succeeded in a certain measure in occupying myself, and I learnt by experience that hard work is in truth a soothing balsam, which precedes the slow healing powers of time. "But much as I believed myself to have acquired a kind of philosophic tranquillity by this withdrawal into my narrow sphere of business, yet I could not escape agitating feelings when the Peace of Tilsit really separated us from the Prussian State, and removed its frontier as much as forty miles to the east of us. The moving words with which our unhappy King took leave of his subjects, in the ceded provinces, and discharged the officials from their oath of allegiance, made us feel our loss still deeper. 'Dear children, it is an indescribably sorrowful feeling when the old ties of allegiance, of love, and confidence, which have bound us through long successive years to our ancestors, our State, and rulers, are at once violently rent, when a new and foreign ruler is forced upon a people, for whom no heart beats, who is received with despairing doubts, and who on his side feels nothing for his subjects.'"