I feel so certain that I am right, that I venture once more to entreat your Majesty to send me three or four watches of the most elegant workmanship. As regards your Majesty’s desire that I should remain in Paris, it is my duty to obey, though I feel myself almost too old for the work. I wish, however, to acquaint your Majesty with the fact that my expenses, including those of the five journeys I have made in the course of the last twelvemonth or so, will far exceed my ordinary salary. I received from Monsieur de Morvilliers 500 crowns on condition that they should be repaid to Monsieur de Vulcob at Vienna. I most humbly beseech your Majesty to give the necessary orders accordingly, and to charge the money to the account of my yearly salary. The Queen, it appears, has still chances left her, and your Majesty will probably have plenty of aspirants to her hand, from whom you may choose a new son-in-law! Duke Eric of Brunswick[91] has sent a gentleman hither with credentials, Doctor Joachim Gotzen, to offer the Queen a share in his bed and board. He likewise offers his portion of the Duchy of Brunswick, such as it is, and 100,000 crowns which he has in France, and undertakes that, if he dies without children, his dominions and the rest of his property shall go to the House of Austria. As the Doctor hinted and suggested instead of using plain language, the Queen could only make a guess at what he meant. When he pressed for an answer, she referred him to me. Accordingly he repeated his story to me, and asked me to get the Queen to give him an answer in person. I told him that her husband’s death had been a great shock, and that any suggestion of a second marriage, whoever the person might be, was most distasteful to her. An answer from herself was therefore out of the question. I added, that the Duke could write, if he pleased, to your Majesty, whose ward she had again become by her husband’s death, and that he would get an answer from you. I treated him throughout the conversation with all possible courtesy, and contrived to satisfy him with this reply, which he took back to his master. He only asked me that the matter might not go further; I promised it should remain a secret, and I also undertook at his request, should I ever fall in with the Duke, to bear witness to the care and loyalty with which he had discharged his commission. The letter was written from Aachen, and bore the following address, in the Duke’s own handwriting, as I think, ‘De V. R. Mag^d muy fiel y leal servidor hasta à la muerte, qui sus reales manos besa mas de cien mil vezes, El Duque Erico de Brunswicque y Lunenburg.’