Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/109

 and then I sat in the window and smelled the summer fragrance of roses and all sorts of shrubs in the little garden, and while so doing I heard one of your dear Beethoven pieces, played by an unknown hand on the piano, wafted over from some window opposite, distantly and in snatches, and to me it sounded prettier than any concert. I kept wondering why I must, after all, be so far away, for a long time, from you and the children, while so many people who do not love each other at all see one another from morning till night. It is now seven months since I received at Reinfeld the order to join the regiment; since then we have twice paid each other a hasty visit, and it will be eight or nine months before we shall be again united. It must, indeed, be the Lord's will, for I have not sought it, and when I am sorrowful it is a consolation to me that I did not speak a syllable in order to come here, and that ambition for outward pomp was not what led me to this separation. We are not in this world to be happy and to enjoy, but to do our duty; and the less my condition is a self-made one, the more do I realize that I am to perform the duties of the office in which I am placed. And I certainly do not wish to be ungrateful, for I am, nevertheless, happy in the knowledge of possessing so much that is dear, even if far away from here, and in the hope of a happy reunion. On the arrival of every letter from Reinfeld my first feeling is one of hearty gratitude for the unmerited happiness that I still have you in this world, and with every death of wife or child which I see in the newspaper the consciousness of what I have to lose comes forcibly home to me, and of what the merciful God has granted and thus far preserved to me. Would that gratitude therefor might so dispose my obstinate and worldly heart to receive the mercy of the Lord that it shall not be necessary for Him to chastise me in what I love, for I have greater fear of that than of any other evil. In a few weeks it must be decided whether I shall be made Envoy here or stay at Reinfeld. The Austrians at Berlin are agitating against my appointment, be-