comment nous sortirons de cette affaire._ I take Him as witness that I fear not the peril I run. But to lose you for ever, that is what distresses me! “If I wished to go away from you, it was because I might be able to help you better at a distance than if I were near. They might imprison me perhaps, but that is a ridiculous thought; I will not dream of it. I was admiring you last evening, watching you laughing before that mirror in so merry a mood; yet all the time I was trembling, for I thought that the Elector and your mother were already talking about that letter, and were planning how to punish us. Your cheerfulness makes me suspect many things: sometimes I think you will not see me for a long time and little by little detach yourself from me. Other thoughts come into my head whereof I will not write to you. I am so troubled because of that accident that my brain is in a whirl. To crown it all, Madame Goritz has told me that she knows I hid _incognito_ three days in the town without showing myself, and the people I employed in my intrigue had betrayed me, and a dozen things beside; it would take too long to write it all. This, added to the loss of your note, makes me beside myself. If among all my sorrows I had not the one of fearing that you might weary of me, I should console myself in spite of everything, but that thought finishes me. Should they begin to question La Confidente as to whether I have written to her sometimes, she must say at once that I wrote to her several times from Flanders, but not from here. My brother-in-law [Count Lewenhaupt] must be apprised of the same thing, so that we may not betray ourselves. It is necessary my brother-in-law should know what to answer in case he should be questioned, and know to whom the letters were addressed which my lacquey brought him. I shall say that when I went away I asked him to give the letters addressed to the ‘Frole Crunbuglen’ to a woman who would ask for them under that name, and he sent on to me the answers the woman brought, without asking from whom the letters came. He must say neither more nor less. If I do not make my meaning clear, I must have a word with you, for it is wise to take precautions in time, lest we be discovered. You must deny ever having written to me at all, but La Confidente must not deny that I have spoken about you, in case they ask what I have written to her.” “[HANOVER, undated.]