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¹ If you and the army are in good health, it is well; I, too, am in good health.^[1] Your official dispatch gave me, in common with everybody else, more pleasure than you could believe. For you indicate in it as confident a hope of peace as I have consistently held out to all others, because I relied exclusively upon you; though I must tell you that your enemies of long standing (your friends of recent date) are profoundly dismayed at your dispatch; they have been hurled down from the height of their expectations, and lie prostrate.

² As regards your private letter to me, however, in spite of its containing but a slight expression of your regard for me, I assure you I was charmed with it; for generally speaking nothing cheers me up so much as the consciousness of my good services to others; and if, as sometimes happens, they elicit no adequate response, I am quite content that the balance of services rendered should rest with me. Of this I have no doubt at all that, if the proofs of my deep devotion to you have not quite succeeded in attaching me to you, that attachment will be brought about and cemented between us by the interests of the state.

³ Still, not to leave you in any doubt as to what it was I missed in your letter, I shall be as frank with you in mine as my own nature and our mutual friendship alike demand. My achievements have been such that I did expect some congratulatory reference