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[[letterhead]]
RITZ HOTEL
LONDON, W.1.
[[image - Ritz Hotel logo, initials R H within a rectangle, caption, HYDE PARK 8181]]
TELEGRAMS: RITZOTEL,LONDON.
[[/letterhead]]

Thursday April 3d., 1958

Dear Germain:

Acknowledging yours of the 31st., I will take up first of all, the matter of my return.  I did use the date of April 4th in my van Heesch letter to force action, but I had actually my reservation on the United States for the sailing of Saturday the 5th April. However with the developments in the Petrus Christus matter, I cancelled the reservation for obvious reasons.  I can readily see your point in wanting plenty of opportunity for conferences before your flight and with this in mind I had almost made up my mind to break my prejudice against a Westward flight myself, when matters had progressed sufficiently.

It has occurred to me that were you to advance your date of flying it would be equally possible for us to have the discussions here ^[[or Paris]] and in any event, it might be very useful for me to be with you when you would go to Strasbourg.  I need not stress this part, but in the event of your buying the picture, the matter of getting it off to New York is as important as was the shipment of the sculptures from Vaduz.  The transfer of funds on delivery [[pencil underlined]] with export paper [[/pencil underlined]] [[underlined]] in Switzerland,[[/underlined]] must be handled, for certainly you are not going to take any risks of non-delivery [[underlined]] after [[/underlined]] paying.  And the Doctor, on his part, is not going to deliver the ptg. until he sees the color of the money and makes his arrangements for leaving part of it in Switzerland, as I indicated to you.

But even were you not to be able to fly before the 18th., there is still the matter of the Duke and the release, as you will see from the enclosed letter from van Heesch, and there are other matters which could take up the intervening time until your arrival.  I have a feeling that another visit to Madrid would be rewarding, as I wrote you, but you may think this should be dismissed until after the Strasbourg affair is settled, or perhaps entirely.  I do know that the man wrote that he would not wish to miss me on my next visit and that he wants ^[["]]to exchange ideas,^[["]] but I have had no way of looking up the values in the Casa Torres ducal collections.  I miss the Frick and had been hoping that Miss Morrison might have turned up some references disclosing various Goyas, in that large collection, as stated by the Duquesa de Lecera.

[[double underlined]] WESTMINSTER; [[/double underlined]] I went yesterday to the newly-arranged house of the Grosvenor brothers, cousins of the present (cracked) Duke, to see many of the pictures from Eaton and also Bourdon House.  The plans for the paintings are still nebulous and certainly some [[pencil underlined]] must [[/pencil underlined]] be sold to satisfy the Treasury. (£ 4,000,000 were paid a few weeks ago and another £ 4,000,000 must be found by selling more land, houses and pictures). In the house presently is a Claude exactly the same size as the one at the Cavendishs, 9 feet long, etc.  There are two others, [[underlined]] Morning [[/pencil underlined]] and [[pencil underlined]] Evening [[/underlined]]