"'Tis necessary," said he, "for your Majesty fully to comprehend, that henceforth the enterprise is your own.
I have done my work faithfully thus far; it is now for your Majesty to take it thoroughly to heart; and embrace it with the warmth with which an affair involving so much of your own interests deserves to be embraced." He avowed that without full confidence in his sovereign's sympathy he would never have conceived the project.

"I confess that the enterprise is great," he said, "and that by many it will be considered rash.

Certainly I should not have undertaken it, had I not felt certain of your Majesty's full support." But he was already in danger of being forced to abandon the whole scheme--although so nearly carried into effect--for want of funds.

"The million promised," he wrote, "has arrived in bits and morsels, and with so many ceremonies, that I haven't ten crowns at my disposal.

How I am to maintain even this handful of soldiers--for the army is diminished to such a mere handful that it would astonish your Majesty--I am unable to imagine.