son, has taken care to put him in possession of great wealth, which will
sufficiently compensate him for other deficiencies, and enable him at the
same time to dispense with any favour from me.

I hope you will be impartial enough to see the reasons which prompt me to
refuse your request. It may be disagreeable to you, but I consider it
necessary. 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.