eye with its large pupil will compensate me for possibly delayed or
shortened letters.

If I could only dream of you when you do of me! But recently I do not
dream at all--shockingly healthy and prosaic; or does my soul fly to
Reinfeld in the night and associate with yours? In that case it can
certainly not dream here; but it ought to tell about its journey in
the morning, whereas the wayward thing is as silent about its
nocturnal employments as though it, too, slept like a badger.

Your reminder of the bore, Fritz, with the letter-pouch transports me
to Reinfeld and makes me long still more eagerly for the time when I
can once again hug my black Jeannette for my good-morning at the desk.
About the letter with the strange address, _evidently_ in a woman's
hand, I should like to tell you a romantic story, but I must destroy
every illusion with the explanation that it comes from a man who used
to be a friend of mine, who, if I do not mistake, once in Kniephof
took a copy of an Italian address that I received. Again 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