Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/51

 of January. I am very thankful that you do not write in the evening, my love, even if I am myself to suffer thereby. Every future glance into your gray-blue-black eye with its large pupil will compensate me for possibly delayed or shortened letters.

If I could only dream of you when you do of me! But recently I do not dream at all—shockingly healthy and prosaic; or does my soul fly to Reinfeld in the night and associate with yours! In that case it can certainly not dream here; but it ought to tell about its journey in the morning, whereas the wayward thing is as silent about its nocturnal employments as though it, too, slept like a badger.

Your reminder of the bore, Fritz, with the letter-pouch transports me to Reinfeld and makes me long still more eagerly for the time when I can once again hug my black Jeannette for my good-morning at the desk. About the letter with the strange address, evidently in a woman's hand, I should like to tell you a romantic story, but I must destroy every illusion with the explanation that it comes from a man who used to be a friend of mine, who, if I do not mistake, once in Kniephof took a copy of an Italian address that I received. Again a curtain behind which one fancies there is all the poetry in the world, and finds the flattest prose. (I once saw in Aix-la-Chapelle, while strolling about the stage, the Princess of Eboli, after I had just spent my sympathy upon her as she lay overwhelmed and fainting at the queen's feet in one of the scenes, eating bread and butter and cracking bad jokes behind the scenes.) That cousin Woedtke is fond of me, and that the Versin sausage and letter affair is all right, I am glad to learn.

I need not assure you that I have the most heartfelt sympathy for the sufferings of your good mother; I hope rest and summer will affect her health favorably, and that she will recover after a while, with the joy of seeing her children happy. When she is here she shall not have any steps to go up to reach you, and shall live directly next to you.