Petersburg, June 4, '59.

_My Dear Heart_,--At last, day before yesterday, came the
long-yearned-for news from you, with the reassuring post-mark, Stolp.
I could not go to sleep at all in the evening, because of anxious
pictures of my imagination, whose scenes were all the stopping-places
between Berlin and Reinfeld. * * * Yesterday I dined at the Czarina's,
in Zarske, where I found the Grand Princess Marie, who could tell me
at least that she had seen you in Berlin, and that you were all right.
On the way back the Czar met me at the station, and took me into his
coupé--very conspicuous here for a civilian with such an old hat as I
generally wear. In the evening I was, of course, on the islands, on a
lively dark-brown horse, and drank tea there with a nice, old,
white-haired Countess Stroganoff. The lilac, I must tell you, has
flowered here as beautifully as in Frankfort, and the laburnum, too;
and the nightingales warble so happily that it is hard to find a spot
on the islands where one does not hear them. In the city, during these
days, we had such unremitting heat as we almost never have at home.
The captain of the _Eagle_ told me that the temperature in southern
Pomerania was actually refreshing in comparison; with such short
nights, too, the morning brings no real coolness, and I could ride or
drive about for hours in the mysterious gloaming which hovers at
midnight over the surface of the water, if the increasing brightness
did not give warning that another day is waiting with its work and
care, and that sleep demands its rights beforehand. Since I have had
the drosky, in which there is too little room for an interpreter, I am
making, to the smirking delight of Dmitri, the coachman, progress in
Russian, since there is nothing left for me to do but to speak it