“Alas! my heart, what can I say to you, save that I am more dead than alive, seeing that I am deprived of the means of serving you, and seeing you depart[61] without knowing how I may be able to aid you? M. du Fresne often informs me that you send him news of yourself, but I, I cannot know whither you have been conducted, and I am greatly astonished, since you have the means of writing to some persons, that I may not receive your letters also. For you know that there is not a man in the world who would be so much grieved at your distress as myself, nor who, with greater gaiety of heart, would be more determined to hazard his life to do you a useful service. I am sending you one of my dressing-gowns, which has served me and you also when we were together, begging you to believe that I should prefer you to your gown, since I should be of more service to you than a sable. Let me know that you are as anxious to retain me in your good graces, now that you are a captive as when you were at liberty; for you know that, being accustomed not to share them with any one, but to be the first and the only one, I feel sure that you have not lost the good opinion that you have of me, but, on the contrary, that it is rather increased. It remains to make use of me and to give me the opportunity of coming to free you from the trouble in which you are, for you must acquaint me with the means of doing so. I have eyes which do nothing but weep, and strength which is inanimate, since it is not commanded by you.” If Condé had been unable at first to discover the place where his Isabelle had been incarcerated, he had succeeded in getting her son into his possession; and, having received two letters from Isabelle recommending the child to his care, he hastens to relieve her maternal anxiety: “I shall content myself by telling you that I have our son in my hands, safe, and merry and certain to live.... It is true that they had left him at the house of a poor woman, who made him lie on straw for six nights, like a hound, which I thought very strange. But if, at the beginning, those to whom he did not belong treated him like a little dog, I have taken him like a father to bring him up _en prince_. He deserves it, for he is the most beautiful creature that ever man saw.” And the lovelorn prince concludes: “If I do not see you soon, I would as lief die as live. I desire it as much or more than my salvation.” And, at the end of the monogram which replaces the signature, he writes: “Let us die together!”