Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/127

 after your dear birthday, just when I am celebrating mine by the calendar here. Farewell, my dear, and give each child a sweet orange from me. Love to all.

Petersburg, June 4, '59. My Dear Heart,—At last, day before yesterday, came the long-yearned-for news from you, with the reassuring post-mark, Stolp. I could not go to sleep at all in the evening, because of anxious pictures of my imagination, whose scenes were all the stopping-places between Berlin and Reinfeld. Yesterday I dined at the Czarina's, in Zarske, where I found the Grand Princess Marie, who could tell me at least that she had seen you in Berlin, and that you were all right. On the way back the Czar met me at the station, and took me into his coupé—very conspicuous here for a civilian with such an old hat as I generally wear. In the evening I was, of course, on the islands, on a lively dark-brown horse, and drank tea there with a nice, old, white-haired Countess Stroganoff. The lilac, I must tell you, has flowered here as beautifully as in Frankfort, and the laburnum, too; and the nightingales warble so happily that it is hard to find a spot on the islands where one does not hear them. In the city, during these days, we had such unremitting heat as we almost never have at home. The captain of the Eagle told me that the temperature in southern Pomerania was actually refreshing in comparison; with such short nights, too, the morning brings no real coolness, and I could ride or drive about for hours in the mysterious gloaming which hovers at midnight over the surface of the water, if the increasing brightness did not give warning that another day is waiting with its work and care, and that sleep demands its rights beforehand. Since I have had the drosky, in which there is too little room for an interpreter, I am making, to the smirking delight of Dmitri, the coachman, progress in Russian, since there is nothing left for me to do but to