Do you still remember, my heart, how nineteen years ago we passed through here on the way from Prague to Vienna?  No mirror showed the future, neither when, in 1852, I went along this line with the good Lynar.  Matters are going well with us; if we are not immoderate in our demands, and do not imagine that we have conquered the world, we shall acquire a pace which will be worth the trouble.  But we are just as quickly intoxicated as discouraged, and I have the ungrateful task of pouring water in the foaming wine, and making them see that we are not living alone in Europe, but with three neighbors still.  The Austrians are in Moravia, and we are already so bold that their positions to-day are fixed for our headquarters to-morrow.  Prisoners are still coming in, and one hundred and eighty guns since the 3d up to to-day.  If they call up their southern army, with God’s good help we shall beat them again.  Confidence is universal.  I could hug our fellows, each facing death so gallantly, so quiet, obedient, well-behaved, with empty stomachs, wet clothes, wet camp, little sleep, the soles of their boots falling off, obliging to everybody, no looting, no incendiarism, paying where they can, and eating moldy bread.  There must after all abide in our man of the soil a rich store of the fear of God, or all that would be impossible.  News of acquaintances is difficult to obtain; people are miles apart from one another; no one knows where the other is, and nobody to send; men enough, but no horses.  I have had Philip searched for, for four days; he is slightly wounded in the head by a lance, as G——­ wrote to me, but I cannot find out where he is, and now we are already forty miles farther on.

The King exposed himself very much indeed on the 3d, and it was a very good thing that I was with him; for all warnings on the part of others were of no avail, and no one would have ventured to speak as I allowed myself to do the last time, and with success, after a heap of ten men and fifteen horses of the Sixth Regiment of cuirassiers were wallowing in their blood near us, and the shells whizzed round the sovereign in the most unpleasant proximity.  The worst luckily did not burst.  But after all I like it better than if he should err on the other side.  He was enchanted with his troops, and rightly, so that he did not seem to remark all the whistling and bursting about him; as quiet and comfortable as on the Kreuzberg, and kept constantly finding battalions that he wanted to thank and say good evening to, until there we were again under fire.  But he has had to hear so much about it, that he will leave it alone for the future, and you can be at ease; besides, I hardly believe in another real battle.

If you have no news of a person, you can all implicitly believe that he lives and is well, as all casualties occurring to one’s acquaintances are known in twenty-four hours at the longest.  We have not come at all into communication with Herwarth and Steinmetz, but know that they are both well.  G----- quietly leads his squadron with his arm in a sling.  Good-bye, I must go on duty.