laid such stress on my maxim of never believing in anything bad before
it forces itself upon me as incontestable? We adhere firmly to our
maxims only so long as they are not put to the test; when that happens
we throw them away, as the peasant did his slippers, and run off on the
legs that nature gave us. If you have the disposition to try the virtue
of my maxims, then I shall never again give utterance to any of them,
lest I be caught lying; for the fact is that I do really feel somewhat
anxious. With fevers in Reddis, to let ten days pass without writing is
very horrible of you, if you are well. Or can it be that you did not
receive on Thursday, as usual, my letter that I mailed on Tuesday in
Magdeburg, and, in your indignation at this, resolved not to write to me
for another week? If _that_ is the state of affairs, I can't yet make up
my mind whether to scold or laugh at you. The worst of it now is that,
unless some lucky chance brings a letter from you directly to Stolp, I
shall not have any before Thursday, for, as I remember it, there is no
mail leaving you Saturday and Sunday, and I should have received
Friday's today. If you have not sworn off writing altogether and wish to
reply to this letter, address me at Naugard. * * *

Had another visitor, and he stayed to supper and well into the
night--my neighbor, the town-counsellor Gärtner. People think they
must call on each other Sunday evening, and can have nothing else to
do. Now that all is quiet in the night, I am really quite disturbed
about you and your silence, and my imagination, or, if not that, then
the being whom you do not like to have me name, shows me with scornful
zeal pictures of everything that _could_ happen. Johanna, if you were
to fall sick now, it would be terrible beyond description. At the
thought of it, I fully realize how deeply I love you, and how deeply
the bond that unites us has grown into me. I understand what you call
loving much. When I think of the possibility of separation--and