ain 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.

Why do you wear mournful black in dress and heart, my angel?
Cultivate the green of hope that today made right joyous revelry in me
at sight of its external image, when the gardener placed the first
messengers of spring, hyacinths and crocus, on my window-ledge. _Et
dis-moi donc, pourquoi es-tu paresseuse? Pourquoi ne fais-tu pas de
musique?_ I fancied you playing _c-dur_ when the hollow, melting wind
howls through the dry twigs of the lindens, and _d-moll_ when the
snow-flakes chase in fantastic whirls around the corners of the old
tower, and, after their desperation is spent, cover the graves with
their winding-sheet. Oh, were I but Keudell, I'd play now all day
long, and the tones would bear me over the Oder, Rega, Persante,
Wipper--I know not whither. _A propos de paresse_, I am going to
permit myself to make one more request of you, but with a preface.
When I ask you for anything I add (do not take it for blasphemy or
mockery) thy will be done--_your_ will, I mean; and I do not love you
less, nor am I vexed with you for a second if you do not fulfil my
request. I love you as you are, and as you choose to be. After I have,
by way of preface, said so much with inmost, unadorned truth, without
hypocrisy or flattery, I beg you to pay some attention to French--not
much, but somewhat--by reading French things that interest you, and,
what is not clear to you, make it clear with the dictionary. If it
bores you, stop it; but, lest it bore you, try it with books that
interest you, whatever they may be--romances or anything else. I do
not know your mother's views on such reading, but in my