"It is a week to-day since the last meeting of the Council, under my government, for this year, and I sent in the afternoon to the post-house to inquire whether the Spanish letters had arrived, and received for answer, No. The following day, at noon on Saturday, Herr Brindts sent his servant with your letter of the 11/22 of this month. As far as concerns your letter, we are in the first place all rejoiced that, thanks to God, you are in good health, which is a great mercy; and then that you are well pleased with your partners, and on this account likewise you should thank the Lord, that you have met in a foreign country with such honourable and well-disposed men. God grant that you may henceforth pass your time with all contentment, in peace and harmony, and also in a sound and prosperous condition till it pleases God to restore you to your country. Nevertheless, in reading your letter I have remarked that your place of residence, Lisbon, and its inhabitants, both clerical and lay, are not altogether suited to you, and you do not find yourself quite right in your present position, owing to which I discover in you some traces of impatience. It cannot be otherwise than that the change from Hamburg to Lisbon, the difference between the inhabitants of one and the other, their customs and behaviour, and many other things, should strike you with amazement, nay, even with consternation and anger; but you must remember that there and in other places, you have had many predecessors in like case, with whom it has fared the same, and to whom the great change in everything, especially in religious matters, has appeared very surprising. "According to the Latin adage, _post nubila Phœbus_, that is, bad weather is followed by brighter and more agreeable sunshine, which may the most benign God in his mercy fulfil to you, and grant that, as you met with and endured great dangers and bodily weakness by sea, the time which you may spend in Portugal may sweeten and brighten the former sour and bitter days, and that you may by degrees forget those bad days, and be comforted and rejoice in the good ones, which may the Almighty in his mercy constantly grant and bestow upon you. Amen. "Brother-in-law Gerdt Buermeister (who loves you as his child) told me to-day, that many things would indeed appear surprising to you on your first arrival at Lisbon, especially the seeing on all sides the forms of white, black, and gray monks and other persons; but it would be only three or four months, before you would become accustomed to this and other things. Now it is certainly true that one gets habituated in time to everything. I was for four years constantly at Strasburg, and got so accustomed to it that it became alike to me whether I lived at Strasburg or Hamburg, and was never disturbed about anything.