The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume X Part 2

_Le souper est servi_, the evening is gone, and I have done nothing but chat with you and smoke: is that not becoming employment for the dike-captain? Why not?

A mysterious letter from ---- lies before me. He writes in a tone new for him; admits that he perceives that he did many a wrong to his first wife; did not always rightly guide and bear with her weakness; was no prop to the "child," and believes himself absolved by this severe castigation. _Qu'est-ce qu'il me chante_? Has the letter undergone transformation in the Christian climate of Reinfeld, or did it leave the hand of this once shallow buffoon in its present form? He a.s.serts, moreover, that he lives in a never dreamed of happiness with his present wife, whose acquaintance he made a week before the engagement, and whom he married six weeks after the same event: a happiness which his first marriage has taught him rightly to prize. Do you know the story of the French tiler who falls from the roof, and, in pa.s.sing the second story, cries out, "_ca va bien, pourvu que ca dure_?" Think, only, if we had been betrothed on the 12th of October '44, and, on November 23d, had married: What anxiety for mamma!

The English poems of mortal misery trouble me no more now; that was of old, when I looked out into nothing--cold and stiff, snow-drifts in my heart. Now a black cat plays with it in the suns.h.i.+ne, as though with a rolling skein, and I like to see its rolling. I will give you, at the end of this letter, a few more verses belonging to that period, of which fragmentary copies are still preserved, as I see, in my portfolio. You may allow me to read them still; they harm me no more.

_Thine eyes have still (and will always have) a charm for me_.[12]

Please write me in your next letter about the uncertain marriage-plans. I believe, _by Jove!_[12] that the matter is becoming serious. Until the day is fixed, it still seems to me as though we had been dreaming; or have I really pa.s.sed a fortnight in Reinfeld, and held you in these arms of mine? Has Finette been found again? Do you remember our conversation when we went out with her in leash--when you, little rogue, said you would have "given me the mitten" had not G.o.d taken pity on me and permitted me at least a peep through the keyhole of His door of mercy! That came into my mind when I was reading I Cor. vii. 13 and 14 yesterday.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRINCE BISMARCK FRANZ VON LENBACH]

A commentator says of the pa.s.sage that, in all relations of life, Christ regards the kingdom of G.o.d as the more powerful, victorious, finally overcoming all opposition, and the kingdom of darkness as powerless, falling in ruins ever more and more. Yet, how do most of you have so little confidence in your faith, and wrap it carefully in the cotton of isolation, lest it take cold from any draught of the world; while others are vexed with you, and proclaim that you are people who esteem yourselves too holy to come into contact with publicans, etc. If every one should think so who believes he has found truth--and many serious, upright, humble seekers do believe they find it elsewhere, or in another form--what a Pennsylvania solitary-confinement prison would G.o.d's beautiful earth become, divided up into thousands and thousands of exclusive coteries by insuperable part.i.tions! Compare, also, Rom. xiv. 22 and xv. 2; also, particularly, I Cor. iv. 5; viii. 2; ix. 20; also xii. 4 and the following; further, xiii. 2; all in the First Ep. to the Cor., which seems to me to apply to the subject. We talked, during that walk, or another one, a great deal about "the sanct.i.ty of doing good works." I will not inundate you with Scripture pa.s.sages in this connection, but only tell you how splendid I find the Epistle of James. (Matt. xxv. 34 and following; Rom. ii. 6; II Cor. v. 10; Rom. ii. 13; I Epistle of John iii. 7, and countless others.) It is, indeed, unprofitable to base arguments upon separate pa.s.sages of Scripture apart from their connection; but there are many who are honestly striving, and who attach more importance to pa.s.sages like James ii. 14 than to Mark xvi.

16, and for the latter pa.s.sage offer expositions, holding them to be correct, which do not literally agree with yours. To what interpretation does the word "faith" not lend itself, both when taken alone and in connection with that which the Scriptures command us "to believe," in every single instance where they employ the word! Against my will, I fall into spiritual discussion and controversies. Among Catholics the Bible is read not at all, or with great precaution, by the laity; it is expounded only by the priests, who have concerned themselves all their lives with the study of the original sources. In the end, all depends upon the interpretation. Concert in Butow amuses me: the idea of Butow is, to my mind, the opposite of all music.

I have been quite garrulous, have I not? Now I must disturb some doc.u.ment-dust, and sharpen my pen afresh to the police-official style, for the president of the provincial court and the government. Could I but enclose myself herewith, or go along in a salmon-basket as mail-matter! Till we meet again, _dearest black one_.[13] I love you, _c'est tout dire_.

BISMARCK.

(I am forgetting the English verses):

"Sad dreams, as when the spirit of our youth Returns in sleep, sparkling with all the truth And innocence, once ours, and leads us back In mournful mockery over the s.h.i.+ning track Of our young life, and points out every ray Of hope and peace we've lost upon the way!"

By Moore, I think; perhaps Byron.

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

Cordial remembrances to your parents and the Reddentin folk.

Schonhausen, February 23, '47.

_My Angel!_--I shall not send this letter on its way tomorrow, it's true, but I do want to make use of the few unoccupied minutes left me to satisfy the need I am conscious of every hour, to communicate with you, and forthwith to compose a "Sunday letter" to you once more.

Today I have been "on the move" all day long. "The Moorish king rode up and down," unfortunately not "through Granada's royal town," but between Havelberg and Jerichow, on foot, in a carriage, and on horseback, and got mighty cold doing so--because, after the warm weather of the last few days, I had not made the slightest preparation to encounter five degrees below freezing, with a cutting north wind, and was too much in haste or too lazy to mount the stairs again when I noticed the fresh air. During the night it had been quite endurable and superb moonlight. A beautiful spectacle it was, too, when the great fields of ice first set themselves ma.s.sively in motion, with explosions like cannon-shots, shattering themselves against one another; they rear, shoving over and under each other; they pile up house-high, and sometimes build dams obliquely across the Elbe, in front of which the pent stream rises until it breaks through them with rage. Now are they all broken to pieces in the battle--the giants--and the water very thickly covered with ice-cakes, the largest of which measure several square rods, which it bears out to the free sea like shattered chains, with grumbling, clas.h.i.+ng noises. This will go on so for about three days more, until the ice that comes from Bohemia, which pa.s.sed the bridge at Dresden several days ago, has gone by. (The danger is that the ice-cakes by jamming together may make a dam, and the stream rise in front of this--often ten to fifteen feet in a few hours.) Then comes the freshet from the mountains which floods the bed of the Elbe, often a mile in width, and is dangerous in itself, owing to its volume. How long that is to last we cannot tell beforehand. The prevailing cold weather, combined with the contrary sea wind, will certainly r.e.t.a.r.d it. It may easily last so long that it will not be worth while to go to Reinfeld before the 20th. If only eight days should be left me, would you have me undertake it, nevertheless?--or will you wait to have me without interruption after the 20th, or perhaps 18th? It is true that _fiance_ and dike-captain are almost incompatible; but were I not the latter, I have not the slightest idea who would be. The revenues of the office are small, and the duties sometimes laborious; the gentlemen of the neighborhood, however, are deeply concerned, and yet without public spirit. And even if one should be discovered who would undertake it for the sake of the t.i.tle, which is, strange to say, much desired in these parts, yet there is no one here (may G.o.d forgive me the offence) who would not be either unfit for the business or faint-hearted. A fine opinion, you will think, I have of myself, that I only am none of this; but I a.s.sert with all of my native modesty that I have all these faults in less degree than the others in this part of the country--which is, in fact, not saying much.

I have not yet been able to write to Moritz, and yet I must send something to which he can reply, inasmuch as my former letter has not as yet brought a sign of life. Or have you crowded me out of his heart, and do you fill it alone? The little pale-faced child is not in danger, I hope. That is a possibility in view of which I am terrified whenever I think of it--that as a crowning misfortune of our most afflicted friend, this thread of connection with Marie might be severed. But she will soon be a year and a half old, you know; she has pa.s.sed the most dangerous period for children. Will you mope and talk of warm hands and cold love if I pay a visit to Moritz on my next journey, instead of flying to Reinfeld without a pause as is required of a loving youth?

That you are getting pale, my heart, distresses me. Do you feel well otherwise, physically, and of good courage? Give me a bulletin of your condition, your appet.i.te, your sleep. I am surprised also that Hedwig Dewitz has written to you--such a heterogeneous nature, that can have so little in common with you. She was educated with my sister for several years in Kniephof, although she was four or five years the elder of the two. Either she loves you--which I should find quite easy to explain--or has other prosaic intentions. I fancy that she, as is quite natural, does not feel at home in her father's house; she has, therefore, always made her home with others for long periods and with satisfaction.

In your letter which lies before me I come upon "self-control" again.

That is a fine acquisition for one who may profit by it, but surely to be distinguished from compulsion. It is praiseworthy and amiable to wean one's self from tasteless or provoking outbursts of feeling, or to give to them a more ingratiating form; but I call it self-constraint--which makes one sick at heart--when one stifles his own feelings in himself. In social intercourse one may practise it, but not we two between ourselves. If there be tares in the field of our heart, we will mutually exert ourselves so to dispose of them that their seed cannot spring up; but, if it does, we will openly pull it up, but not cover it artificially with straw and hide it--that harms the wheat and does not injure the tares. Your thought was, I take it, to pull them up unaided, without paining me by the sight of them; but let us be in this also one heart and one flesh, even if your little thistles sometimes p.r.i.c.k my fingers. Do not turn your back on them nor conceal them from me. You will not always take pleasure in my big thorns, either--so big that I cannot hide them; and we must pull at them both together, even though our hands bleed. Moreover, thorns sometimes bear very lovely flowers, and if yours bear roses we may perhaps let them alone sometimes. "The best is foe to the good"--in general, a very true saying; so do not have too many misgivings about all your tares, which I have not yet discovered, and leave at least a sample of them for me. With this exhortation, so full of unction, I will go to sleep, although it has just struck ten, for last night there was little of it; the unaccustomed physical exercise has used me up a bit, and tomorrow I am to be in the saddle again before daylight.

Very, very tired am I, like a child.

Schonhausen, March 14, 1847.

_Jeanne la Mechante!_--What is the meaning of this? A whole week has pa.s.sed since I heard a syllable from you, and today I seized the confused ma.s.s of letters with genuine impatience--seven official communications, a bill, two invitations, one of which is for a theatre and ball at Greifenberg, but not a trace of Zuckers (the Reinfeld post-office) and "Hochwohlgeboren." [14] I could not believe my eyes, and had to look through the letters twice; then I set my hat quite on my right ear and took a two hours' walk on the highway in the rain, without a cigar, a.s.sailed by the most conflicting sentiments--"a prey to violent emotions," as we are accustomed to say in romances. I have got used to receiving my two letters from you regularly every week, and when once we have acquired the habit of a thing we look upon that as our well-won right, an injury to which enrages us. If I only knew against whom I should direct my wrath--against Boge, against the post-office, or against you, _la chatte la plus noire_, inside and out. And why don't you write? Are you so exhausted with the effort you made in sending two letters at a time on Friday of last week? Ten days have gone by since then--time enough to rest yourself. Or do you want to let me writhe, while you feast your eyes on my anxiety, tigress! after speaking to me in your last letters about scarlet and nervous fevers, and after I had laid such stress on my maxim of never believing in anything bad before it forces itself upon me as incontestable? We adhere firmly to our maxims only so long as they are not put to the test; when that happens we throw them away, as the peasant did his slippers, and run off on the legs that nature gave us. If you have the disposition to try the virtue of my maxims, then I shall never again give utterance to any of them, lest I be caught lying; for the fact is that I do really feel somewhat anxious. With fevers in Reddis, to let ten days pa.s.s without writing is very horrible of you, if you are well. Or can it be that you did not receive on Thursday, as usual, my letter that I mailed on Tuesday in Magdeburg, and, in your indignation at this, resolved not to write to me for another week? If _that_ is the state of affairs, I can't yet make up my mind whether to scold or laugh at you. The worst of it now is that, unless some lucky chance brings a letter from you directly to Stolp, I shall not have any before Thursday, for, as I remember it, there is no mail leaving you Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, and I should have received Friday's today. If you have not sworn off writing altogether and wish to reply to this letter, address me at Naugard. * * *

Had another visitor, and he stayed to supper and well into the night--my neighbor, the town-counsellor Gartner. People think they must call on each other Sunday evening, and can have nothing else to do. Now that all is quiet in the night, I am really quite disturbed about you and your silence, and my imagination, or, if not that, then the being whom you do not like to have me name, shows me with scornful zeal pictures of everything that _could_ happen. Johanna, if you were to fall sick now, it would be terrible beyond description. At the thought of it, I fully realize how deeply I love you, and how deeply the bond that unites us has grown into me. I understand what you call loving much. When I think of the possibility of separation--and possible it is still--I should never have been so lonely in all my dreary, lonely life.

What would Moritz's situation be, compared with that?--for he has a child, a father, a sister, dear and intimate friends in the neighborhood. I have no one within forty miles with whom I should be tempted to talk more than that which politeness demands; only a sister--but a happily married one with children is really one no longer, at least for a brother who is single. For the first time I am looking the possibility straight in the eyes that you might be taken away from me, that I might be condemned to inhabit these empty rooms without a prospect of your sharing them with me, with not a soul in all the surrounding region who would not be as indifferent to me as though I had never seen him. I should, indeed, not be so devoid to comfort in myself as of old, but I should also have lost something that I used not to know--a loving and beloved heart, and at the same time be separated from all that which used to make life easy in Pomerania through habit and friends.h.i.+p. A very egotistical line of thought and way of looking at things this discloses, you will say.

Certainly, but Pain and Fear are egotists, and, in cases like that referred to, I never think the deceased, but only the survivors, are to be pitied. But who speaks of dying? All this because you have not written for a week; and then I have the a.s.surance to lecture you for gloomy forebodings, etc.! If you had only not spoken of the deadly fevers in your last letter. In the evening I am always excited, in the loneliness, when I am not tired. Tomorrow, in bright daylight, in the railway carriage, I shall perhaps grasp your possible situation with greater confidence.

Be rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer. All the angels will guard you, my beloved heart, so that we shall soon meet again with joy. Farewell, and salute your parents. I wrote your father this morning. Your faithful BISMARCK.

Berlin, Friday, May 15, '47.

_Dear Heart_,--Your father gave me your letter this morning at the session, and in consequence I hardly know what subject was discussed, or, at least, lacked energy to form a clear, conscious conception of it. My thoughts were in Reinfeld and my heart full to overflowing of care. I am submissive in all that may happen, but I cannot say that I should be submissive with gladness. The chords of my soul become relaxed and toneless when I think of all possibilities. I am not, indeed, of that self-afflicting sort that carefully and artfully destroys its own hope and constructs fear, and I do not believe that it is G.o.d's will to separate us now--for every reason I cannot believe it; but I know that you are suffering, and I am not with you, and yet if I were there, I could perhaps contribute something to your tranquillity, to your serenity, were it only that I should ride with you--for you have no one else for that. It is so contrary to all my views of gallantry, not to speak of my sentiments for you, that any power whatever should keep me here when I know that you are suffering and I could help and relieve you; and I am still at war with myself to determine what my duty is before G.o.d and man. If I am not sooner there, then it is fairly certain that I shall arrive in Reinfeld with your father at Whitsuntide, probably a week from tomorrow. The cause of your illness may lie deeper, or perhaps it is only that the odious Spanish flies have affected you too powerfully. Who is this second doctor you have called in? The frequent changing of doctors, and, on one's own authority, using between-times all sorts of household remedies, or remedies prescribed for others, I consider very bad and wrong. Choose one of the local doctors in whom you have the most confidence, but keep to him, too; do what he prescribes and nothing else, nothing arbitrary; and, if you have not confidence in any of the local men, we will both try to carry through the plan of bringing you here, so that you may have thorough treatment under the direction of Breiers, or some one else. The conduct of your parents in regard to medical a.s.sistance, the obstinate refusal of your father, and, allied to that, your mother's arbitrary changing and fixed prejudices, in matters which neither of them understand, seem to me, between ourselves, indefensible. He to whom G.o.d has intrusted a child, and an only child at that, must employ for her preservation all the means that G.o.d has made available, and not become careless of them through fatalism or self-sufficiency. If writing tires you, ask your mother to send us news. Moreover, it would seem to me very desirable if one of your friends could be prevailed upon to go to you until you are better. Whether a doctor can help you or not--forgive me, but you cannot judge of that by your feelings. G.o.d's help is certainly decisive, but it is just He who has given us medicine and physician that, through them, His aid may reach us; and to decline it in this form is to tempt Him, as though the sailor at sea should deprive himself of a helmsman, with the idea that G.o.d alone can and will give aid. If He does _not_ help us through the means He has placed within our reach, then there is nothing left to do but to bow in silence under His hand. If you should be able to come to Zimmerhausen after Whitsuntide, please write to that effect beforehand if possible. If your illness should become more serious, I shall certainly leave the Landtag, and even if you are confined to your bed I shall be with you.

At such a moment I shall not let myself be restrained by such questions of etiquette--that is my fixed resolve. You may be sure of this, that I have long been helping you pray that the Lord may free you from useless despondency and bestow upon you a heart cheerful and submissive to G.o.d--and upon me, also; and I have the firm confidence that He will grant our requests and guide us both in the paths that lead to Him. Even though yours may often go to the left around the mountain, and mine to the right, yet they will meet beyond.

The salt water has already gone from here. If you are too weak for riding, then take a drive every day. When you are writing to me, and begin to feel badly in the least, stop immediately; give me only a short bulletin of your health, even if it is but three lines, for, thank Heaven, words can be dispensed with between us--they cannot add or take away anything, since our hearts look into each other, eye to eye, to the very bottom, and though here and there, behind a fold, some new thing is discovered, a strange thing it is not. Dear heart, what stuff you talk (excuse my rudeness) when you say I must not come if I would rather stop in Zimmerhausen or Angermunde at Whitsuntide!

How can I take pleasure anywhere while I know that you are suffering, and moreover, am uncertain in what degree? With us two it is a question, not of amusing and entertaining, but only of loving and being together, spiritually, and, if possible, corporeally; and if you should lie speechless for four weeks--sleep, or something else--I would be nowhere else, provided nothing but my wish were to decide. If I could only "come to your door," I would still rather be there than with my dear sister; and the sadder and sicker you are, so much the more. But the door will not separate me from you, however ill you may be. That is a situation in which the slave mutinies against his mistress. * * *

Your faithful B.

Berlin, Tuesday Morning, May 18, '47.

_Dearest_,--The last letters from Reinfeld permit me to hope that your illness is not so threatening at the moment as I feared from the first news, although I am continually beset by all possible fears about you, and thus am in a condition of rather complicated restlessness. * * *

My letter in which I told you of my election you have understood somewhat, and your dear mother altogether, from a point of view differing from that which was intended. I only wanted to make my position exactly clear to you, and the apologies which to you seemed perhaps forced, as I infer from your mother's letter, you may regard as an entirely natural outflow of politeness. That I did not stand in need of justification with you I very well know; but also that it must affect us both painfully to see our fine plans cancelled. It was my ardent wish to be a member of the Landtag; but that the Landtag and you are fifty miles apart distressed me in spite of the fulfilment of my wish. You women are, and always will be, unaccountable, and it is better to deal with you by word of mouth than by writing. * * * I have ventured once or twice on the speaker's platform with a few words, and yesterday raised an unheard-of storm of displeasure, in that, by a remark which was not explained clearly enough touching the character of the popular uprising of 1813, I wounded the mistaken vanity of many of my own party, and naturally had all the halloo of the opposition against me. The resentment was great, perhaps for the very reason that I told the truth in applying to 1813 the sentence that any one (the Prussian people) who has been thrashed by another (the French) until he defends himself can make no claim of service towards a third person (our King) for so doing. I was reproached with my youth and all sorts of other things. Now I must go over before today's session to see whether, in printing my words, they have not turned them into nonsense. * * *

Yours forever, B.

Berlin, Friday, May 21, '47.

_Tres chere Jeanneton_,--When you receive this letter you will know that I am not to visit you in the holidays. I shall not offer "apologies," but reasons why it is not to be. I should miss certainly four, and probably five, meetings of the estates, and, according to the announcement we have received, the most important proceedings are to be expected at the coming meetings. There it may depend upon one vote, and it would be a bad thing if that were the vote of an absentee; moreover, I have succeeded in acquiring some influence with a great number, or, at least, with some delegates of the so-called court party and the other ultra-conservatives from several provinces, which I employ in restraining them so far as possible from bolting and awkward shying, which I can do in the most unsuspected fas.h.i.+on when once I have plainly expressed my inclination. Then, too, I have some money affairs to arrange, for which I must make use of one of the holidays. The Landtag will either be brought to a close on the 7th of June--and in that case I should stay here until that date--or it will continue in session until all the matters have been arranged, in which event I should stay till after the decision of the important political questions which are now imminent and shall be less conscientious about all the insignificant pet.i.tions that follow after, and await their discussion in Reinfeld. It will, besides, be pleasanter for you and the mother not to have us both--the father and me--there at one time, but relieving each other, so that you may be lonely for a shorter time. * * * Your father will tell you how I stirred up the hornet's-nest of the volunteers here lately, and the angry hornets came buzzing to attack me; on the other hand, I had as compensation that many of the older and more intelligent people drew near to me--people I did not know at all--and a.s.sured me that I had said nothing but the truth, and that was the very thing that had so incensed the people. But I must take the field now; it is ten o'clock.

Please ask your father to write immediately about your health. I should so much like to hear the opinion of another person besides your mother. I am all right--only much excited. Farewell, and G.o.d guard you.

Yours altogether and forever, B.

Berlin, May 26, '47.

_Dearest_,-- * * * If I were only through with the Landtag and the delivery of Kniephof, could embrace you in health, and retire with you to a hunting-lodge in the heart of green forest and the mountains, where I should see no human face but yours! That is my hourly dream; the rattling wheel-work of political life is more obnoxious to my ears every day.--Whether it is your absence, sickness, or my laziness, I want to be alone with you in contemplative enthusiasm for nature. It may be the spirit of contradiction, which always makes me long for what I have not. And yet, I have you, you know, though not quite at hand; and still I long for you. I proposed to your father that I should go with him; we would immediately have our banns published and be married, and both come here. An apartment for married people is empty in this house, and here you could have had sensible physicians and every mortal help. It seemed to him too unbecoming. To you, too?

It seems to me still the most sensible thing of all, if you are only strong enough for the trip. If the Landtag should continue longer than to the 6th of June--which I still hope it will not--let us look at the plan more carefully. * * *

Your faithful B.

Schonhausen, Friday, May 28, '47.

_My Poor Sick Kitten_,-- * * * In regard to your illness, your father's letter has calmed my anxiety somewhat as to the danger, but yours was so gloomy and depressed that it affected me decidedly. My dear heart, such sadness as finds expression there is almost more than submission to G.o.d's will: the latter cannot, in my opinion, be the cause of your giving up the hope, I might say the wish, that you may be better, physically, and experience G.o.d's blessing here on earth as long as may be in accordance with His dispensation. You do not really mean it, either--do you, now?--when, in a fit of melancholy, you say that nothing whatever interests you genuinely, and you neither grieve nor rejoice. That smacks of Byron, rather than of Christianity. You have been sick so often in your life, and have recovered--have experienced glad and sad hours afterwards; and the old G.o.d still lives who helped you then. Your letter stirred in me more actively than ever the longing to be at your side, to fondle you and talk with you. * * *

I do not agree with you in your opinion about July, and I would urge you strongly, too, on this point to side with me against your parents.

When a wife, you are as likely to be sick as when a _fiancee_--and will be often enough, later; so why not at the beginning, likewise? I shall be with you as often as I am free from pressing engagements, so whether we are together here or in Reinfeld makes no difference in the matter. We do not mean to marry for bright days only: your ill-health seems to me an utterly frivolous impediment. The provisional situation we are now in is the worst possible for me. I scarcely know any longer whether I am living in Schonhausen, in Reinfeld, in Berlin, or on the train. If you fall sick, I shall be a sluggard in Reinfeld all the autumn, or however long our marriage would be postponed, and cannot even a.s.sociate with you quite unconstrainedly before the ceremony.

This matter of a betrothed couple seventy miles apart is not defensible; and, especially when I know you are ailing, I shall take the journey to see you, of course, as often as my public and private affairs permit. It seems to me quite necessary to have the ceremony at the time already appointed; otherwise I should be much distressed, and I see no reason for it. Don't sell Brunette just now; you will ride her again soon. I must be in Berlin at noon for a consultation about plans for tomorrow. Farewell. G.o.d strengthen you for joy and hope.