angel. It is possible that a letter
from you is here. The delivery is always rather irregular: sometimes
the letter-carrier brings them, sometimes they are delivered at the
Chamber postal station. I will go immediately and inquire if anything
is there; then I will take a bath, and return at least ten calls that
have been paid me. It is a misery that now the people always receive
one--one loses a terrible amount of time at it.... Hans is still
inclined to treat me tyrannically, but I resist, and have been so far
successful that I sleep as long as I please, whereat the coffee grows
cold, however, as he is obstinately bent on not breakfasting alone.
So, too, he will not go to bed if I do not go at the same time, but
sleeps, just like my little Nanne, on the sofa.... Now, good-by my
much-beloved heart. I am very anxious on your account, and often am
quite tearful about it. Best regards to the parents.

Your most faithful v.B.

Berlin, Monday. (Postmark, August 28, '49.)

_My Darling_,--I sit here in my corner room, two flights up, and
survey the sky, full of nothing but little sunset-tinted lambs, as it
appears, along the Taubenstrasse and over the tree-tops of Prinz
Carl's garden, while along Friedrichstrasse it is all golden and
cloudless; the air damp and mild, too. I thought of you and of Venice,
and this only I wanted to write to you. News has come today that
Venice has surrendered at discretion; so we can go there again, and
again see the tall white grenadiers. * * * I dined with Manteuffel
today, yesterday with Prince Albert, of course, day before yesterday
with Arnim, and then I took a ride with him of fourteen miles at a
gallop--which suited me well, save for some muscular pains. In the
Chamber we keep on doing nothing whatever; in the Upper House the
German question, happily, has been brought forward again in very good
speeches by Gerlach, Bethmann, and Stahl, and yet today the Camphausen
proposition was adopted with all the votes against nineteen. With us,
too, it is beginning to excite men's tempers. The proposition is bad
in its tendency, but its result insignificant even if it goes through
with us, as is to be expected. _Tant de bruit pour une omelette_. The
real decision will not be reached in our Chambers, but in diplomacy
and on the battlefield, and all that we prate and resolve about it has
no more value than the moonshine observations of a sentimental youth
who builds air-castles and thinks that some