and they had no desire to send him the sword, as they had not
found that complaisance in him which they expected. All this courtly
_empressement_ became so repugnant to Loison, that he himself prevailed
on Napoleon to recall him to the army.

"With his weaker successor, Canuel, it succeeded better. My worthy
friend the president, Von Vinke, was the first to experience it. An
incidental expression thrown out by him in a remonstrance, 'that
otherwise he could no longer carry on his office,' was readily laid
hold of as signifying a resignation, and he was dismissed from his
post.

"In order to overcome my grief at things that could not be altered, I
endeavoured to find distraction in a great work. The yet incomplete
state of the laws of mortgages in the county of Muenster, offered me the
handiest and best material I devoted myself to this tedious work with
the greatest zeal, and with the assistance of many referendaries, I
accomplished the registry of all the title deeds which had to be
recorded in the mortgage book of the government of Muenster. Thus I
succeeded in a certain measure in occupying myself, and I learnt by
experience that hard work is in truth a soothing balsam, which precedes
the slow healing powers of time.

"But much as I believed myself to have acquired a kind of philosophic
tranquillity by this withdrawal into my narrow sphere of business, yet
I could not escape agitating feelings when the Peace of Tilsit really
separated us from the Prussian State, and removed its frontier as much
as forty miles to the east of us. The moving words with which our
unhappy King took leave of his subjects, in the ceded provinces, and
discharged the officials from their oath of allegiance, made us feel
our loss still deeper. 'Dear children, it is an indescribably sorrowful
feeling when the old ties of allegiance, of love, and confidence, which
have bound us through long successive years to our ancestors, our
State, and rulers, are at once violently rent, when a new and foreign
ruler is forced upon a people, for whom no heart beats, who is received
with despairing doubts, and who on his side feels nothing for his
subjects.'"

Here we conclude the narrative of the good Prussian. Muenster and the
county of Mark were attached to the new grand-dukedom of Berg; Sethe
himself became procurator-general of the Court of Appeals at
Duesseldorf. But not for long, the firm uprightness of the German
appeared suspicious to the foreign