28th, Evening.—After a drive for three hours in an open carriage through the gardens, and having seen all their beauties seriatim, I am drinking tea and looking at the golden evening sky and green woods. The Imperial family desired last night to be alone, for which I can not blame them, and as a reconvalescent I sought solitude, and quite enough of it for this trip. I smoke my cigar in peace, drink excellent tea, and through the smoke of both gaze at a sunset of rare magnificence. The inclosed jasmine I send you as a proof that it really does grow in the open air and blossoms here. On the other hand, I must confess that I was shown the common chestnut in espalier as a rare plant, wrapped up in the winter. But there are very fine oaks, ashes, limes, poplars, and birches as thick as oaks.
BISMARCK TO HIS SISTER.
Peterhof, 29th June, 1859.
I wished to send you my good wishes in a pair of slippers by the steamer of the 25th, so that you would have received them this very day, but I could not even do it the week before, I lay so exhausted on my back. Since January in Berlin I have never been quite well, and anxiety, climate, and colds increased my originally unimportant rheumatism to such a pitch some ten days since, that I could not breathe without very great pain. The complaint, rheumatico-gastric-nervous, had settled in the liver, and was attacked by large cupping-glasses like saucers, and cantharides and mustard everywhere, until I succeeded, after having been half won for a better world, in convincing the physicians that my nerves, by eight years of uninterrupted anxiety and continual excitement, had been weakened, and that more tapping of blood would lead to typhus or idiocy. A week ago yesterday was the worst, but my good constitution soon came to my rescue, after moderate quantities of canary were ordered. I came hither yesterday—my first trip—to take leave of the Empress-Mother, who is goodness itself towards me, and at her desire I have remained here till her departure, which takes place to-day about noon, to enjoy myself with green and sea and country air after all my sufferings. Do not write to Johanna about these details of sickness; I will tell her myself; I have till now only told her of ordinary witchcraft. As soon as I am at rest I will write especially to Oscar; I was deeply touched by his long letter, and should have replied long since, but before my illness I was for a week in the neighborhood of Moscow, and the conduct of much business is doubly difficult by the presence of the Court and Ministers in Zarskoe-Selo. I hope to obtain my furlough in the first third of July, and shall then go to Berlin, and I hope by Kröchlendorf to Pomerania.
BISMARCK TO HIS WIFE.
Petersburg, 2d July, 1859.
Half an hour ago a courier awakened me with tidings of war and peace. Our politics are sliding more and more into the Austrian groove, and if we fire one shot on the Rhine the Italo-Austrian war is over; and in place of it we shall see a Prusso-French war, in which Austria, after we have taken the load from her shoulders, will assist, or assist so far as her own interests are concerned. That we should play a very victorious part is scarcely to be conceded. Be it as God wills! it is here below always a question of time; nations and men, folly and wisdom, war and peace, they come like waves and so depart, while the ocean remains! On this earth there is nothing but hypocrisy and jugglery, and whether this mask of flesh is to be torn off by fever or a cartridge, it must fall at last, and then the difference between a Prussian and an Austrian, if of the same stature, will be so small that it will be difficult to distinguish between them. Fools and wise men, as skeletons, look very much like one another; specific patriotism we thus lose, but it would be desperate if we carried it into eternity.