God be with you.  Write to us.  I am convinced that with your great talents, you will strike root over there and make your fortune.  Be on your guard against art and against side interests, from which a man cannot make a living.  Do you know that the Grand Duke has made Botho his adjutant?  It looks as if the boy might rise pretty high.

Have a good trip and sometimes think of your devoted father.

* * * * *

With a sigh and a short, almost inaudible laugh of great compassion and great bitterness, Frederick folded up the letter.

“’I don’t know whether this letter will find you, or where it will find you,’” he repeated, and added mentally, “or how it will find you.”

Then he sat still for a while, staring into space.

After a time he became observant of the American jackanapes, who had annoyed him in the smoking-room the day before.  He was flirting with a young lady apathetically lounging in an easy-chair, a Canadian, Frederick had been told.  He did not trust his eyes when he saw the American, who had been toying with a small box of matches, pile them up carelessly, and set fire to them in that inflammable room.  A steward came up and modestly explained that it was his duty to ask him to refrain from what he was doing.  At which the jackanapes dismissed him with “Get out of here, you idiot.”

Frederick drew out his mother’s letter, but before reading it, he had to meditate briefly upon the matter that took the place of brains in the young American’s skull.

* * * * *

My Dear Son,

Your mother’s prayers accompany you.  You have gone through a great deal and suffered very much for one of your years.  To let you hear something pleasant at the very start, I will tell you of the children.  They are very well.  This week I convinced myself with my own eyes that they have a good home with Pastor Mohaupt.  Albrecht is splendid.  Bernhard, you know, is more like his mother and always has been a quiet child.  But he seemed more alert and more talkative.  The life in the pastor’s house and on the farm seems to please him.  Pastor Mohaupt thinks both boys are by no means untalented.  He has already begun to give them lessons in Latin.  Little Annemarie asked me very timidly about her mother, but especially about you.  She spoke of you often.  I told the children there was a medical congress in New York or Washington, where they would at last make an end of that dreadful disease, consumption.  My dear child, do come back soon to this dear old Europe.

I had a long talk with Doctor Binswanger.  He told me your wife’s trouble is hereditary.  It was in her all the time and would certainly have cropped out, sooner or later.  He spoke of your work, too, dear child, and thought you ought not allow yourself to be crushed.  Four or five years of hard work, he said, would make up for your set-back.