Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/72

 catching up with all sorts of police arrangements relating to dike, fire, and roads—could not have occasioned them. You see how little you can depend upon the maternal inheritance of forebodings. Also in regard to the injurious effects of the Landtag excitement upon my health, I can completely reassure you. I have discovered what I needed—physical exercise—to offset mental excitement and irregular diet. Yesterday I spent in Potsdam, to be present at the water carnival—a lively picture. The great blue basins of the Havel, with the splendid surroundings of castles, bridges, churches, enlivened with several hundred gayly decorated boats, whose occupants, elegantly dressed gentlemen and ladies, bombard one another lavishly with bouquets when they can reach each other in passing or drawing up alongside. The royal pair, the whole court, Potsdam's fashionable people, and half of Berlin whirled in the skein of boats merrily, pell-mell; royalists and liberals all threw dry or wet flowers at the neighbor within reach. Three steamboats at anchor, with musical choruses, constituted the centre of the ever-changing groups. I had the opportunity to salute, hurriedly and with surprise, and throw flowers at, many acquaintances whom I had not seen for a long time. My friend Schaffgotsch is passionately fond of walking, and he was responsible for our returning to the railway station on foot—a distance of almost three miles—at such a pace as I had not kept up in a long while. After that I slept splendidly until nine, and am in a state of physical equilibrium today such as I have not enjoyed for some time. As the rather dusty promenades in the Thiergarten do not give me enough of a shaking-up in the time that I have available for that purpose, Mousquetaire will arrive here tomorrow, so that he, with his lively gallop, may play the counterpart to the tune that politics is dancing in my head. My plan about Berlin and the wedding immediately, etc., was certainly somewhat adventurous when you look at it in cold blood, but I hope there will be no change from July. If I am to be tormented, as you say,