e sofa
in the red drawing-room; and with sympathetic attention to my desire
the mail kept for my enjoyment precisely at this gossiping hour your
letter, which I should have received by good rights day before
yesterday. You know, if you were able to decipher my inexcusably
scrawled note [3] from Schlawe, how I struck a half-drunken crowd of
hussar officers there, who disturbed me in my writing. In the train
I had, with my usual bad luck, a lady _vis-a-vis,_ and beside me two
very stout, heavily fur-clad passengers, the nearer of whom was a
direct descendant of Abraham into the bargain, and put me in a bitter
humor against all his race by a disagreeable movement of his left
elbow.

I found my brother in his dressing-gown, and he employed the five
minutes of our interview very completely, according to his habit, in
emptying a woolsack full of vexatious news about Kniephof before me:
disorderly inspectors, a lot of damaged sheep, distillers drunk every
day, thoroughbred colts (the prettiest, of course) come to grief, and
rotten potatoes, fell in a rolling torrent from his obligingly opened
mouth upon my somewhat travel-worn self. On my brother's account I
must affect and utter some exclamations of terror and complaint, for
my indifferent manner on receiving news of misfortune vexes him, and
as long as I do not express surprise he has ever new and still worse
news in stock. This time he attained his object, at least in my inner
man, and when I took my seat next to the Jewish elbow in green fur I
was in a right bad humor; especially the colt distressed me--an animal
as pretty as a picture and three years old.

Not before getting out of doors did I become conscious of the
ingratitude of my heart, and the thought of the unmerited happiness
that had become mine a fortnight earlier again won the mastery in me.
In Stettin I found drinking, gambling friends. William Ramin took
occasion to say, _apropos_ of a remark about reading the Bible, "Tut!
In Reinfeld I'd speak like that, too, if I were in your place, but to
believe you can impose on your oldest acquaintances is amusing." I
found my sister very well and full of joy about you and me. She wrote
to you, I think, before she received your letter. Arnim is full of
anxiety lest I become "pious." He kept looking at me all the time
earnestly and thoughtfully, with sympathetic concern, as one looks at
a dear friend whom one would like to save and yet almost gives up for
lost. I have