Dearest,—­ * * * If I were only through with the Landtag and the delivery of Kniephof, could embrace you in health, and retire with you to a hunting-lodge in the heart of green forest and the mountains, where I should see no human face but yours!  That is my hourly dream; the rattling wheel-work of political life is more obnoxious to my ears every day.—­Whether it is your absence, sickness, or my laziness, I want to be alone with you in contemplative enthusiasm for nature.  It may be the spirit of contradiction, which always makes me long for what I have not.  And yet, I have you, you know, though not quite at hand; and still I long for you.  I proposed to your father that I should go with him; we would immediately have our banns published and be married, and both come here.  An apartment for married people is empty in this house, and here you could have had sensible physicians and every mortal help.  It seemed to him too unbecoming.  To you, too?  It seems to me still the most sensible thing of all, if you are only strong enough for the trip.  If the Landtag should continue longer than to the 6th of June—­which I still hope it will not—­let us look at the plan more carefully. * * *

Your faithful B.

Schoenhausen, Friday, May 28, ’47.

My Poor Sick Kitten,—­ * * * In regard to your illness, your father’s letter has calmed my anxiety somewhat as to the danger, but yours was so gloomy and depressed that it affected me decidedly.  My dear heart, such sadness as finds expression there is almost more than submission to God’s will:  the latter cannot, in my opinion, be the cause of your giving up the hope, I might say the wish, that you may be better, physically, and experience God’s blessing here on earth as long as may be in accordance with His dispensation.  You do not really mean it, either—­do you, now?—­when, in a fit of melancholy, you say that nothing whatever interests you genuinely, and you neither grieve nor rejoice.  That smacks of Byron, rather than of Christianity.  You have been sick so often in your life, and have recovered—­have experienced glad and sad hours afterwards; and the old God still lives who helped you then.  Your letter stirred in me more actively than ever the longing to be at your side, to fondle you and talk with you. * * *

I do not agree with you in your opinion about July, and I would urge you strongly, too, on this point to side with me against your parents.  When a wife, you are as likely to be sick as when a fiancee—­and will be often enough, later; so why not at the beginning, likewise?  I shall be with you as often as I am free from pressing engagements, so whether we are together here or in Reinfeld makes no difference in the matter.  We do not mean to marry for bright days only:  your ill-health seems to me an utterly frivolous impediment.  The provisional situation we are now in is the worst possible for me.  I scarcely know any longer whether I am living in Schoenhausen,