should ignore its existence and should date our letters December
'51, in consequence of which this said month of December seemed
of eternal duration.

Soon afterwards I was overpowered by an extraordinary depression
in which, somehow, the disappointment about the turn of political
events and the reaction created by my exaggerated water cure,
almost ruined my health. I perceived the triumphant return of all
the disappointing signs of reaction which excluded every high
ideal from intellectual life, and from which I had hoped the
shocks and fermentations of the past few years had freed us for
ever. I prophesied that the time was approaching when
intellectually we should be such paupers that the appearance of a
new book from the pen of Heinrich Heine would create quite a
sensation. When, a short time afterwards, the Romancero appeared
from the pen of this poet who had fallen into almost complete
neglect, and was very well reviewed by the newspaper critics, I
laughed aloud; as a matter of fact, I suppose I am among the very
few Germans who have never even looked at this book, which, by
the way, is said to possess great merit.

I was now compelled to pay a great deal of attention to my
physical condition, as it gave me much cause for anxiety and
necessitated a complete change in my methods. I introduced this
change very gradually and with the co-operation of my friends. My
circle of acquaintances had widened considerably this winter,
although Karl Ritter, who had escaped from Albisbrunnen a week
after my own departure and had tried to settle in our
neighbourhood, ran off to Dresden, as he found Zurich much too
slow for his youthful spirits. A certain family of the name of