“I have no friend but Your Highness. The King, my beloved husband, writes to you imploring your friendship, for in that lies our only hope. We both beg of you to prove you are our friend by informing the Emperor of our sincere friendship, and of the affection we have always professed for him, you, and all the French. “Poor Prince de la Paz, who is wounded and imprisoned for being our friend, is passionately attached to all France, and he is suffering now for having desired the arrival of your troops, and for having been our only permanent friend. He would have gone to see you had he been free, and now he does not cease to speak of you and express his desire to see the Emperor. Help us to end our days quietly in a place suitable to the health of the King, which, like mine, is delicate, and let it be in company with our friend, who is also that of Your Highness. “My daughter will be my interpreter if I do not have the satisfaction of knowing Your Highness personally and talking to you. Could you make an effort to see us, if only for a minute, by night or when you like? Your worthy officer will tell you all we have said. “I hope you will be able to manage what we want, and that you will pardon all the slips and omissions in the matter, for I do not know where I am, and you must believe that this has been from no slight to you nor lack. “May you live many years! “Your most affectionate “LUISA.” The Queen became quite desperate as the days went by, bringing no definite help from the Grand Duke of Berg, and in one of her letters to her daughter she writes: “If the Grand Duke does not see that the Emperor gives orders for the stoppage of the intrigues against his friend the Prince de la Paz, against me and my daughter, none of us will be safe. All the malevolent people get round my son, and he believes them like oracles, and on his own part he is not very inclined to magnanimity and clemency. He must expect sad results from all this. I and my husband think that, if my son sees the Emperor before he has given his orders, he and those with him will tell him so many lies that he will doubt the truth. For this reason we would beg the Grand Duke to let the Emperor know that we are absolutely in his hands, hoping he will give tranquillity to the King, my husband, me, and the Prince de la Paz, whom we desire to have with us, and end our days peacefully in a place suited to our health without giving the least trouble to anybody. We urgently beg the Grand Duke to let us have daily news of our mutual friend, the Prince de la Paz, because we know absolutely nothing.” The King added the following words in his own handwriting: “I asked the Queen to write this, as my pains prevent my writing much.” The next letter from the Queen of Spain to her daughter for the Grand Duke of Berg is without a date: