"it is difficult to explain, but certainly not the hopes you have in your mind. hopes well, in a word, hopes for the future, and a feeling of joy that there, at all events, i was not entirely a stranger and a foreigner. i felt an ecstasy in being in my native land once more; and one sunny morning i took up a pen and wrote her that letter, but why to her, i don’t quite know. sometimes one longs to have a friend near, and i evidently felt the need of one then," added the prince, and paused.