human
I exceedingly regret, ladies, that I cannot promise you any shortening of your time of banishment. His majesty has received your complaint, and has caused due investigation to be made; and the result of that investigation has not led him to make any relaxation in your case. For it has been clearly ascertained that the good works and charitable deeds of which you informed me on my last visit, consisted in your attending to work to which you were not called, to the neglect of duties which plainly belonged to you; and that for any seeming sacrifice you made in the bestowal of your time and labour, you more than repaid yourselves in the applause which you managed to obtain from a troop of ignorant or interested admirers. It would, in fact, appear that your benevolence and labour for others involved no real self-denial in it, but was only, after all, another but less obvious form of selfishness. His majesty admires and respects nothing more than genuine co-operation in working for the benefit of the suffering and the needy; but in your case this stamp of genuineness is found to be wanting. We trust, however, that your present work may prove to be of a better character, and that at the expiry of your exile you will return home prepared to do good from truly pure and unselfish motives.