, it is true, with a heavy
heart, but in the strong confidence that the grant of your
request will contribute as much as possible to the
protection and preservation for as long as possible of a
life and strength of unreplaceable value to the Fatherland.

"The grounds you offer for your resignation convince me that
any further attempt to induce you to reconsider your
determination would have no prospect of success. I
acquiesce, therefore, in your wish by hereby graciously
releasing you from your offices as Imperial Chancellor,
President of my State Ministry, and Minister of Foreign
Affairs, and trust that your counsels and energy, your
loyalty and devotion, will not be wanting to me and the
country in the future also.

"I have considered it as one of the most valued privileges
in my life that at the commencement of my reign I had you at
my side as my first counsellor. What you have done and
achieved for Prussia and Germany, what you have done for my
House, my ancestors, and me, will remain to me and the
German people in grateful and imperishable memory. But also
in foreign countries your wise and energetic peace policy,
which I, too, in the future also, as a result of sincere
conviction, decide to take as the guiding line of my
conduct, will be always gloriously recognized. It is not in
my power to requite your services as they deserve. I must
rest satisfied with assuring you of my own and the country's
ineffaceable thanks. As a sign of this thanks I confer on
you the rank of a Duke of Lauenburg. I will also send you a
life-sized picture of myself.

"God bless you, my dear Prince, and grant you still many
years of an old age undisturbed and blessed with the
consciousness of duty faithfully done.

"In this disposition I remain to you and yours in the future
also your sincere, obliged, and grateful Emperor and King,

"WILLIAM I.R."

The Emperor has never, so far as is publicly known, issued, or caused
to be issued, an official account of the episode and its _peripeties_,
but the story he poured, evidently out of a full heart, into the ears
of Prince Hohenlohe, then Statthalter of Alsace-Lorraine, during a
midnight drive from the railway station at Hagenau to the hunting
lodge at Sufflenheim, is an historical document of practically
official authe