better, and after using the tepid baths for a time, I feel pretty well for eight or ten days.  I seldom take tonics, but I have begun applications of herbs, according to your advice.  Vering will not hear of plunge baths, but I am much dissatisfied with him; he is neither so attentive nor so indulgent as he ought to be to such a malady; if I did not go to him, which is no easy matter, I should never see him at all.  What is your opinion of Schmidt [an army surgeon]?  I am unwilling to make any change, but it seems to me that Vering is too much of a practitioner to acquire new ideas by reading.  On this point Schmidt appears to be a very different man, and would probably be less negligent with regard to my case.  I hear wonders of galvanism; what do you say to it?  A physician told me that he knew a deaf and dumb child whose hearing was restored by it (in Berlin), and likewise a man who had been deaf for seven years, and recovered his hearing.  I am told that your friend Schmidt is at this moment making experiments on the subject.

I am now leading a somewhat more agreeable life, as of late I have been associating more with other people.  You could scarcely believe what a sad and dreary life mine has been for the last two years; my defective hearing everywhere pursuing me like a spectre, making me fly from every one, and appear a misanthrope; and yet no one is in reality less so!  This change has been wrought by a lovely fascinating girl [undoubtedly Giulietta], who loves me and whom I love.  I have once more had some blissful moments during the last two years, and it is the first time I ever felt that marriage could make me happy.  Unluckily, she is not in my rank of life, and indeed at this moment I can marry no one; I must first bestir myself actively in the world.  Had it not been for my deafness, I would have travelled half round the globe ere now, and this I must still do.  For me there is no pleasure so great as to promote and to pursue my art.

Do not suppose that I could be happy with you.  What indeed could make me happier?  Your very solicitude would distress me; I should read your compassion every moment in your countenance, which would make me only still more unhappy.  What were my thoughts amid the glorious scenery of my father-land?  The hope alone of a happier future, which would have been mine but for this affliction!  Oh!  I could span the world were I only free from this!  I feel that my youth is only now commencing.  Have I not always been an infirm creature?  For some time past my bodily strength has been increasing, and it is the same with my mental powers.  I feel, though I cannot describe it, that I daily approach the object I have in view, in which alone can your Beethoven live.  No rest for him!—­I know of none but in sleep, and I do grudge being obliged to sacrifice more time to it than formerly.[1] Were I only half cured of my malady, then I would come to you, and, as a more perfect and mature man, renew our old friendship.