Dear Miss M‘Laren,
Though we all miss you here almost daily, I am unselfish enough to be heartily glad that you are going to Germany. I am sure the change of air and scene must do you good, and the chestnut trees at Heidelberg must be simply lovely now.
When you get to the top and sit and look down at the valley of the Neckar, you may picture me (as a lonely English teacher at Mannheim) going over there on Sundays to church, and climbing to that brow to enjoy the setting sun and the infinite peacefulness and beauty of the whole scene.
I only wish I could be there with you!—If you stay at all at Mannheim, do go and see my old school, the ‘Grossherzogliches Institut’—I think they will still remember my name there,—and I should like so much to hear news of them. They would be electrified to hear of me as a doctor.
I finished up by having scarlet fever there, and shocked them all by refusing to submit to the stupid old German regimen of starvation and shut windows!...
I do most heartily wish you a pleasant journey and great rest and refreshment in it. Do you know that when I got your letter such a longing came over me to see the Rhine again that for a moment I almost thought of asking if you would take me with you, but five minutes reflection showed me how wrong and foolish it would be for me to leave home just now in the midst of term, and with these ‘appeals’ still undecided, and with my petition to the Senatus coming on! But it was a huge temptation all the same!”
This brings us back to the diary:
“Monday June 5th. The trial over at last. ‘Farthing damages’ satisfactory, I suppose.
But I so weary! If I could but get a month’s real rest! I wake feeling driven,—I get through nothing all day, and I lie down tired out at night.
Wednesday, June 7th. Sur ces entrefaites (as my present neighbours would say) came a letter from St. Agnes saying she was to go to Heidelberg on Saturday for three weeks. Instantly—Why shouldn’t I go with her, quoth the Infantine.