Farewell, madam .-- Your sincere well-wisher, JOSEPH LACHSENBURG, 4th August, 1787.
The application of another anxious and somewhat covetous mother was answered with still more decision and irony: To a Lady.
MADAM .-- You know my disposition; you are not ignorant that the society of the ladies is to me a mere recreation, and that I have never sacrificed my principles to the fair sex.

I pay but little attention to recommendations, and I only take them into consideration when the person in whose behalf I may be solicited possesses real merit.
Two of your sons are already loaded with favours.

The eldest, who is not yet twenty, is chief of a squadron in my army, and the younger has obtained a canonry at Cologne, from the Elector, my brother.

What would you have more?
Would you have the first a general and the second a bishop?
In France you may see colonels in leading-strings, and in Spain the royal princes command armies even at eighteen; hence Prince Stahremberg forced them to retreat so often that they were never able all the rest of their lives to comprehend any other manoeuvre.
It is necessary to be sincere at Court, and severe in the field, stoical without obduracy, magnanimous without weakness, and to gain the esteem of our enemies by the justice of our actions; and this, madam, is what I aim at.

JOSEPH VIENNA, September, 1787.
(From the inedited Letters of Joseph IL, published at Paris, by Persan, 1822.).