If foreign events do not take place, and those we over-smart Diet
people can neither direct nor prognosticate, I know quite definitely
now what we shall have accomplished in one, two, or five years, and am
willing to effect it in twenty-four hours if the others will but be
truthful and sensible for a single day. I have never doubted that they
all use water for cooking; but such an insipid, silly water-broth, in
which not a single bubble of mutton-suet is visible, surprises me.
Send me Filöhr, the village-mayor, Stephen Lotke, and Herr von
Dombrowsky, of the turnpike-house, as soon as they are washed and
combed, and I shall cut a dash with them in diplomatic circles. I am
making headlong progress in the art of saying nothing by using, many
words; I write reports of many pages, which read nice and smooth as
editorials; and if Manteuffel, after he has read them, can tell what
they contain, he can do more than I. Each of us makes believe that he
thinks the other is full of ideas and plans, if he would but speak
out, and yet we none of us know a jot better than the man in the moon
does what is to become of Germany. No mortal, not even the most
malevolently skeptical Democrat, will believe what a vast amount of
charlatanism and consequential pomposity there is in this diplomacy.
But now I have done enough scolding, and want to tell you that I am
well, and that I was very glad and gave thanks to the Lord that,
according to your last letter, all was well with you, and that I love
you very much, and look at every pretty villa, thinking that perhaps
our _babies_ will be running about in it in summer. Do see that you
get the girls to come along, or if they absolutely refuse, bring
others from there with whom we are already somewhat acquainted. I
don't care to have a Frankfort snip in the room, or with the children;
or we must take a Hessian girl, with short petticoats and ridiculous
head-gear; they are half-way rural and honest. For the present I shall
rent a furnished room for myself in the city; the inn here is too