ned by the burning out of a
poor family). I have warmed myself at your dear letter; in the twilight,
even, I recognized your "Right honorable." All my limbs are twitching
with eagerness to be off to Berlin again today, and to characterize the
dikes and floods in terms of the unutterable Poberow[10] dialect. The
inexorable thermometer stands at 2 below freezing-point, accompanied
with howling wind and large flakes, as though it would soon rain. What
is duty! Compare Falstaff's expressions touching honor. At any rate, I
shall write you straightway, even if I ruin myself in postage, and no
sensible thoughts find their way through the debris of the fire that
still has possession of my imagination. After reading your last remark I
have just lit my cigar and stirred the ink. First, like a business-man,
to answer your letter. I begin with a request smacking of the official
desk--namely, that when you write you will, if you please, expressly
state what letters you have received from me, giving their dates;
otherwise one is uncertain as to the regular forwarding of them, as I am
in doubt whether you have received my first letter, which I wrote the
day of my arrival here, while on a business trip, in Jerichow, if I
mistake not, on very bad paper, Friday, the 29th of January. I am very
thankful that you do not write in the evening, my love, even if I am
myself to suffer thereby. Every future glance into your gray-blue-black
eye with its large pupil will compensate me for possibly delayed or
shortened letters.

If I could only dream of you when you do of me! But recently I do not
dream at all--shockingly healthy and prosaic; or does my soul fly to
Reinfeld in the night and associate with yours? In that case it can
certainly not dream here; but it ought to tell about its journey in
the morning, whereas the wayward thing is as silent about its
nocturnal employments as though it, too, slept like a badger.

Your reminder of the bore, Fritz, with the letter-pouch transports me
to Reinfeld and makes me long still more eagerly for the time when I
can once again hug my black Jeannette for my good-morning at the desk.
About the letter with the strange address, _evidently_ in a woman's
hand, I should like to tell you a romantic story, but I must destroy
every illusion with the explanation that it comes from a man who used
to be a friend of mine, who, if I do not mistake, once in Kniephof
took a copy of an Italian address that I received. Ag