While I was forced to hear an almost incredibly long speech by a highly esteemed colleague on the anarchical condition of things in Upper Lippe, I thought how I could use the time, and the most prominent want of my heart seemed to be a desire to pour forth fraternal feelings. A very highly respectable but slightly amusing company surrounds me, at a green-covered circular table, some twenty feet in diameter, in the ground floor of the Prince of Tour and Taxis’s palace, with a view of the garden. The average appearance of these folks is somewhat that of N. N. and Z. in Berlin—they have quite a Federal Diet cut!
I go out shooting pretty regularly, when a single individual shoots some six to fifteen hares and a few pheasants—very seldom a roe or a fox—and a head of red deer is sometimes seen in the far distance. Time for this I have been able to spare from being far more lazy, as my industry in Berlin led to no results.
N. N. is by no means as charming as he used to be; he listens to all kinds of lying stories, and allows himself to be persuaded that I am anxious for his heritage, although I am glad to be left where I am. I am getting accustomed, in the consciousness of yawning innocence, to submit to all symptoms of coldness, and permit a spirit of entire indolence to possess me, after having, I flatter myself, gradually brought the Diet to a knowledge of its piercing nihilism. The well-known song of Heine, “O Bund, du Hund, du bist nicht gesund” (O Diet, you dog, you are not well), will soon be unanimously adopted by resolution as the national anthem of the Germans.
Nobody troubles themselves about the East here. The Russians or the Turks may put what they like in the newspapers; nobody believes either in land or sea fights, and doubts the existence of Sinope, Kalafat, and Schefketel.
Darmstadt has at last stopped reading—and I fall, full of emotion, into your arms, and wish you a pleasant feast. Many greetings to Oscar. Your faithful brother,
B.
TO THE SAME.
From Paris, Hotel de Douvres, April, 1857.
I have five stoves, and am freezing—five clocks, and never know how late it is—eleven great looking-glasses, and my necktie is always awry. I shall probably have to remain here until Tuesday evening, although I am anxious to be at home. Since November I have not emerged from this Bohemianism—since November, and I have not had a sensation of regular and lasting domesticity since you went last summer with Johanna to Schwalbach. Now they want to summon me to Berlin about the salt tax; if I had the time, I could not take part in this debate. I can not, according to my conviction, vote for the Government; but, if I vote for the Opposition, it is hardly proper to ask for leave of absence on such an account; and, considering the rumors as to my eventual entry into the Ministry, of which Johanna, on account of your statements, writes despairingly, one could think I had some ideas of joining in the swindle. Hearty greetings to Oscar.