The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10. Коллектив авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ and you, my poor child, must sit stiff and sedate in the drawing-room, be called Excellency, and be clever and wise with Excellencies. * * * The city is not so bad as you suppose; there are a great many charming villas before the gates, similar to those in the Thiergarten, only more sunny. As Councillor of Legation, it will be difficult for us to live there, owing to distance and expense; but as Ambassador, quite as charming as is possible in a foreign land. By letters of introduction I have quickly become acquainted with the charming world hereabouts. Yesterday I dined with the English Ambassador, Lord Cowley, nephew of the Duke of Wellington; very kind, agreeable people; she is an elegant woman of about forty, very worldly, but benevolent and easy to get acquainted with; I have immediately put myself on a friendly footing with her, so that when you step into the cold bath of diplomatic society she may be a powerful support for you. Previously I called on a Frau von Stallupin (pronounce Stolipine), a young woman without children, kindly, like all Russian women, but terribly rich, and settled in a little castle-like villa, so that one hardly dares to take a step or to sit down; a Scharteuck interior is a rude barn compared with it. Day before yesterday evening I called on Frau von Vrintz, a sister of Meyendorf's wife; the diplomatic folks assemble every evening in her drawing-room. Countess Thun was there, a very handsome young woman, in the style of Malvinia; also the Marquis de Tallenay, French Ambassador, a polite fifty-year-old; Count Szechenyi, a gay young Magyar, full of pranks, and divers other foreign personages. They gamble there every evening, the lady of the house, too, and not for very low stakes; I was scolded for declaring it boresome, and told them it would be my rôle to laugh at those who lost. Society probably does not appeal to you very strongly, my beloved heart, and it seems to me as though I were harming you by bringing you into it, but how shall I avoid that? I have one favor to ask of you, but keep it to yourself, and do not let mother suspect that I have written you one word about it, otherwise she will worry needlessly over it: occupy yourself with French as much as you can in the meantime, but let it be thought that you yourself have discovered that it is useful. Read French, but, if you love me, do not do so by artificial light, or if your eyes pain you; in that case you had better ask mother to read to you, for it is almost harder to understand than to speak. If you know of any agreeable piece of baggage you can get in a hurry to chatter French to you, then engage one; I will gladly pay the bill. You will enter here an atmosphere of French spirit and talk, anyway; so you cannot avoid familiarizing yourself with it as far as possible. If you know of no person whom you like and who is available, let it go; and, at any rate, I beg you sincerely not to consider this advice as a hardship, or otherwise than if I asked you to buy yourself a green or a blue dress; it is not a matter of life and death; you are my wife, and not the diplomats', and they can just as well learn German as you can learn French. Only if you have leisure, or wish to read anyway, take a French novel; but if you have no desire to do so, consider this as not written, for I married you in order to love you in God and according to the need of my heart, and in order to have in the midst of the strange world a place for my heart, which all the world's bleak winds cannot chill, and where I may find the warmth of the home-fire, to which I eagerly betake myself when it is stormy and cold without; but not to have a society woman for others, and I shall cherish and nurse your little fireplace, put wood on it and blow, and protect it against all that is evil and strange, for, next to God's mercy, there is nothing which is dearer and more necessary to me than your love, and the homelike hearth which stands between us everywhere, even in a strange land, when we are together. Do not be too much depressed and sad over the change of our life; my heart is not attached, or, at least, not strongly attached, to earthly honor; I shall easily dispense with it if it should ever endanger our peace with God or our contentment. * * * Farewell, my dearly beloved heart. Kiss the children for me, and give your parents my love.

      Your most faithful v.B.

      Frankfort, May 16, '51.

      Dear Mother,—* * * So far as I am at present acquainted with the highest circles of society, there is only one house which seems to me to promise company for Johanna—that of the English Ambassador. As this letter will probably be opened by the Austrian (Frankfort) post-office authorities, I shall refrain from explaining on this occasion the reasons therefor. Even those letters which, like my last ones, I took occasion to send by a courier, are not secure from indiscretions at Berlin; those to me as well as those from me; but those which go by the regular mail are always opened, except when there is no time for it, as the gentleman who will read this could probably testify. But all that, for better, for worse, forms part of the petty ills of my new position.

      In my thoughts I must always ask you and our dad to forgive me for depriving you of the pleasure and the happiness of your old days, inasmuch as I transplant to such a distance the bright child-life, with all its dear cares, and take Johanna away a second time from her father's house; but I see no other way out of it, which would not be unnatural, or even wrong, and the strong arm which separated us when we hoped to be united can also unite us when we least expect it. You shall at least have the conviction, so far as human purpose can give it, that I shall wander, together with Johanna, with the strong staff of the Word of God, trough this dead and wicked activity of the world, whose nakedness will become more apparent to us in our new position than before, and that to the end of our joint pilgrimage my hand shall strive, in faithful love, to smooth Johanna's paths, and to be a warm covering to her against the breath of the great world.

      Your faithful son, v.B.

      Frankfort, May 18, '51.

      My Darling,—Frankfort is terribly tiresome; I am so spoiled by so much affection and so much business that I am only just beginning to suspect how ungrateful I always was to some people in Berlin, to say nothing of you and yours; but even the cooler measure of fellowship and party affiliation which came to me in Berlin may be called an intimate relationship compared with intercourse here, which is, in fact, nothing more than mutual mistrust and espionage, if there only were anything to spy out or to conceal! The people toil and fret over nothing but mere trifles, and these diplomats, with their consequential hair-splitting, already seem to me more ridiculous than the Member of the Second Chamber in the consciousness of his dignity. If foreign events do not take place, and those we over-smart Diet people can neither direct nor prognosticate, I know quite definitely now what we shall have accomplished in one, two, or five years, and am willing to effect it in twenty-four hours if the others will but be truthful and sensible for a single day. I have never doubted that they all use water for cooking; but such an insipid, silly water-broth, in which not a single bubble of mutton-suet is visible, surprises me. Send me Filöhr, the village-mayor, Stephen Lotke, and Herr von Dombrowsky, of the turnpike-house, as soon as they are washed and combed, and I shall cut a dash with them in diplomatic circles. I am making headlong progress in the art of saying nothing by using, many words; I write reports of many pages, which read nice and smooth as editorials; and if Manteuffel, after he has read them, can tell what they contain, he can do more than I. Each of us makes believe that he thinks the other is full of ideas and plans, if he would but speak out, and yet we none of us know a jot better than the man in the moon does what is to become of Germany. No mortal, not even the most malevolently skeptical Democrat, will believe what a vast amount of charlatanism and consequential pomposity there is in this diplomacy. But now I have done enough scolding, and want to tell you that I am well, and that I was very glad and gave thanks to the Lord that, according to your last letter, all was well with you, and that I love you very much, and look at every pretty villa, thinking that perhaps our babies will be running about in it in summer. Do see that you get the girls to come along, or if they absolutely refuse, bring others from there with whom we are already somewhat acquainted. I don't care to have a Frankfort snip in the room, or with the children; or we must take a Hessian girl, with short petticoats and ridiculous head-gear; they are half-way rural and honest. For the present I shall rent a furnished room for myself in the city; the inn here is too expensive. Lodgings, 5 guilders per day; two cups of tea, without anything else, 36 kreutzers (35 are 10 silbergroschen), and, served as the style is here, it is insulting. Day before yesterday I was at Mayence; it is a charming region, indeed. The rye is already standing in full ears, although the weather is infamously cold every night and morning. The excursions by rail are the best things here. To Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Odenwald, Hamburg, Soden, Wiesbaden, Bingen, СКАЧАТЬ