_Très Chère Jeanneton_,--Your letter of day before yesterday, which I
have just received, has given me profound pleasure and poured into me a
refreshing and more joyous essence: your happier love of life is shared
by me immediately. I shall begin by reassuring you about your gloomy
forebodings of Thursday evening. At the very time when you were
afflicted by them I was rejoicing in the happiness I had long missed, of
living once more in a comfortable Schönhaus bed, after I had suffered
for weeks from the furnished-apartments couch in Berlin. I slept very
soundly, although with bad dreams--nightmares--which I ascribed to a
late and heavy dinner, inasmuch as the peaceful occupations of the
previous day--consisting in viewing many promising crops and well-fed
sheep, together with catching up with all sorts of police arrangements
relating to dike, fire, and roads--could not have occasioned them. You
see how little you can depend upon the maternal inheritance of
forebodings. Also in regard to the injurious effects of the Landtag
excitement upon my health, I can completely reassure you. I have
discovered what I needed--physical exercise--to offset mental
excitement and irregular diet. Yesterday I spent in Potsdam, to be
present at the water carnival--a lively picture. The great blue basins
of the Havel, with the splendid surroundings of castles, bridges,
churches, enlivened with several hundred gayly decorated boats, whose
occupants, elegantly dressed gentlemen and ladies, bombard one another
lavishly with bouquets when they can reach each other in passing or
drawing up alongside. The royal pair, the whole court, Potsdam's
fashionable people, and half of Berlin whirled in the skein of boats
merrily, pell-mell; royalists and liberals all threw dry or wet flowers
at the neighbor within reach. Three steamboats at anchor, with musical
choruses, constituted the centre of the ever-changing groups. I had the
opportunity to salute, hurriedly and with surprise, and throw flowers
at, many acquaintances whom I had not seen for a long time. My friend