Petersburg, July 2, '59.

_My Dear Heart_,--I received your letter of the 25th yesterday, and
you will probably get tomorrow the one that I sent to Stettin on
Wednesday with the Dowager Czarina. My homesick heart follows its
course with yearning thoughts; it was such charming clear weather and
fresh winds when we escorted her Highness on board in Peterhof that I
should have liked to leap on the ship, in uniform and without baggage,
and go along with her. Since then the heat has grown worse, about the
temperature of a freely watered palm-house, and my lack of summer
materials is making itself decidedly felt. I go about in the rooms in
my shirt alone, as the dear blue dressing-gown is too narrow, even now
at six o'clock in the morning. A courier wakened me half an hour ago,
with his war and peace, and I cannot sleep any more now, although I
did not get to bed until towards two. Our politics are drifting more
and more into the Austrian wake, and as soon as we have fired a shot
on the Rhine then it's all over with the war between Italy and
Austria, and, instead of that, a war between France and Prussia will
take the stage, in which Austria, after we have taken the burden from
her shoulders, will stand by us or will not stand by us, just as her
own interests dictate. She will certainly not suffer us to play a
gloriously victorious rôle. It is quite remarkable that in such crises
Catholic ministers always hold the reins of our destiny--Radowitz once
before, now Hohenzollern, who just now has the predominant influence,
and is in favor of war. I look very darkly into the future; our troops
are not better than the Austrian, because they only serve half as
long; and the German troops, on whose support we reckon, are for the
most part quite wretched, and, if things go ill with us, their leaders