cloudless; the air damp and mild, too. I thought of you and of Venice,
and this only I wanted to write to you. News has come today that
Venice has surrendered at discretion; so we can go there again, and
again see the tall white grenadiers. * * * I dined with Manteuffel
today, yesterday with Prince Albert, of course, day before yesterday
with Arnim, and then I took a ride with him of fourteen miles at a
gallop--which suited me well, save for some muscular pains. In the
Chamber we keep on doing nothing whatever; in the Upper House the
German question, happily, has been brought forward again in very good
speeches by Gerlach, Bethmann, and Stahl, and yet today the Camphausen
proposition was adopted with all the votes against nineteen. With us,
too, it is beginning to excite men's tempers. The proposition is bad
in its tendency, but its result insignificant even if it goes through
with us, as is to be expected. _Tant de bruit pour une omelette_. The
real decision will not be reached in our Chambers, but in diplomacy
and on the battlefield, and all that we prate and resolve about it has
no more value than the moonshine observations of a sentimental youth
who builds air-castles and thinks that some unexpected event will make
him a great man. _Je m'en moque!_--and the farce often bores me nearly
to death, because I see no sensible object in this straw-threshing.
Mother's little letter gave me great pleasure, because, in the first
place, I see that you are well, and then because she has her old joke
with me, which is much pleasanter at a distance, as it does not lead
to strife; and yet how I should like to quarrel with mammy once more!
I am genuinely homesick to be quietly with you all in Schönhausen.
Have you received the ribbon for Aennchen?

_Tuesday_.--Hans is just breakfasting, and eating up, from sheer
stinginess, a quarter pound of butter that he bought three days ago,
because it begins to get old. Now he screams that my tea is there,