Baden, June 28, 1825.
MY DEAR SON,--
As in this heat you may perhaps wish to bathe, I send you two more florins. You must be careful to take a written receipt from those to whom you pay money; for that errors do occur is proved by the blue cloth, and the three florins for the looking-glass. You are a thorough Viennese, and although I do not expect you to become a W.W. (depreciated Vienna currency), still it is no disgrace at your age to give an exact account of all that you receive, as no one is considered to be of age till five and twenty, and even if you had property of your own, you would be obliged to account for it to your guardian at your present years. Let us not refer to the past; it would be easy to do so, but only cause me pain; at last it would come to this, "You are indeed a first-rate guardian," &c. If you had any depth of feeling you would have acted very differently in most things.
Now as to my domestic rabble; yesterday the kitchenmaid was off again and got a fresh place; the cause is difficult to discover from my old witch, who is now once more all smiles, and no longer persists in declaring that she has incurred any loss from the weekly bills; what do you think of that?
[The last page of this letter is an illegible fragment.]
428.
TO HIS NEPHEW.
Baden.
MY DEAR GOOD CARL,--
I have just got your letter this evening, and could not help laughing at it. It was not right in the people at Mayence to have acted thus, but since the thing has occurred, it does not signify. Our epoch requires strong minds to scourge those frivolous, contemptible, malicious beings, repulsive as it is to my feelings to cause pain to any man. Besides, I intended a mere jest, and it was far from my intention to let such a thing be printed.[1]
You must ascertain instantly from a magistrate the proper mode of converting the Bank obligations into Rothschild's Austrian Loan, that you may get the authority from a magistrate (not from the Court of those pseudo-guardians!)