oncerning an
audience with the Archduchess Empress-Dowager. But I have just taken
a promenade on the high ramparts all round the inner city, and from
them seen a charming sunset behind the Leopoldsberg, and now I am much
more inclined to think of you than of business. I stood for a long
time on the red Thor Tower, which commands a view of the Jaegerzeil
and of our old-time domicile, the Lamb, with the cafe before it; at
the Archduchess' I was in a room which opens on the homelike little
garden into which we once secretly and thoughtlessly found our way;
yesterday I heard _Lucia_--Italian, very good; all this so stirs
my longing for you that I am quite sad and incapable. For it is terrible
to be thus alone in the world, when one is no longer accustomed to it; I
am in quite a Lynaric mood. Nothing but calls, and coming to know
strangers, with whom I am always having the same talk. Every one knows
that I have not yet been here very long, but whether I was ever here
before; that is the great question which I have answered two hundred
times in these days, and happy that that topic still remains. For folk
bent on pleasure this may be a very pretty place, for it offers whatever
is capable of affording outward diversion to people. But I am longing
for Frankfort as if it were Kniephof, and do not wish to come here by
any means. F. must lie just where the sun went down, over the
Mannhartsberg yonder; and, while it was sinking here, it still continued
shining with you for over half an hour. It is terribly far. How
different it was with you here my heart, and with Salzburg and Meran in
prospect; I have grown terribly old since then. * * * It is very cruel
that we must spend such a long period of our brief life apart; that time
is lost, then, and cannot be brought back. God alone knows why He allows
others to remain together who are quite at their ease when apart; like
an aged friend of mine, who travelled with me as far as Dresden had to
sit in the same compartment with his wife all the time, and could not
smoke; and we must always correspond at a great distance. We shall make
up for it all, and love each other a great deal more when we are again
together; if only we keep well! Then I shall not murmur. Today I had the
great pleasure of receiving, _via_ Berlin, your letter of last Thursday;
that is the second one since I left Frankfort; surely none is lost? I
was very happy and thankful that all of you are well. * * * As soon as I
fi