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[308] letter from Gibraltar, and I thank Heaven, this time, that I am not capable of controlling my occupations and my hours as you do, otherwise I should be forced to wait seven days for a pleasure which I do not wish to defer a moment,—that of answering you. I never made fine phrases to you, of friendship and eternal devotion; indeed, it pleased me that you made none to me; it pleased me that you were in haste to go from here, to return to your country, and to your true and early friends. Nevertheless, the inhuman pride which you attribute to me does not prevent me from saying, first,—or even I alone,—that excepting, on my part also, the friends of early youth with whom I count on passing my latest age, I have never met nor known any one with whom I so desire a reciprocal correspondence of friendship as with you. Poor correspondence it will be, continued hereafter only by letters and by some casual meeting; but if you continue to write to me often, as you have written, and to remember me on many Sundays in the year, I shall place your friendly remembrance among the best and the rare pleasures of my life. Certain it is, that I have had few like that of receiving this letter, since the day of your departure.

Twenty-four hours after that, precisely, we received the long-expected and desired news of the change of my father's destination. He is recalled, made Minister of State, and Capo del Magistrato della Riforma, a title which you will not understand, and which means Chief of the Department of Instruction. It is an honorable, tranquil post, important to the well-being of our country; my father is much satisfied.

I am left, as I foresaw, until some one can be found who knows so little of this country that he desires to come here; and it might be long, I think; but I shall do what I can, assuredly, that this exile may not last much longer. But my father, who was called to come in all haste, has not been able to leave yet; he will not leave before the last days of this month; he will not arrive before the last of the next; he will not speak of me before the beginning of the following; they will give no thought to my affairs before the end; and, in short, before the month of February or March I do not hope for that liberty which I would so gladly employ in making the trip to England with you. Judge for yourself, then, of the pleasure I take in the hope you give me of your passing again through Madrid. I no longer hope, I say, that I can accompany you, but I cling to the hope—indeed I feel it more sure than ever—that I may join you in England. Would to God that of these meetings, although short, I might hope for many;


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