mares--which I ascribed to a
late and heavy dinner, inasmuch as the peaceful occupations of the
previous day--consisting in viewing many promising crops and well-fed
sheep, together with catching up with all sorts of police arrangements
relating to dike, fire, and roads--could not have occasioned them. You
see how little you can depend upon the maternal inheritance of
forebodings. Also in regard to the injurious effects of the Landtag
excitement upon my health, I can completely reassure you. I have
discovered what I needed--physical exercise--to offset mental
excitement and irregular diet. Yesterday I spent in Potsdam, to be
present at the water carnival--a lively picture. The great blue basins
of the Havel, with the splendid surroundings of castles, bridges,
churches, enlivened with several hundred gayly decorated boats, whose
occupants, elegantly dressed gentlemen and ladies, bombard one another
lavishly with bouquets when they can reach each other in passing or
drawing up alongside. The royal pair, the whole court, Potsdam's
fashionable people, and half of Berlin whirled in the skein of boats
merrily, pell-mell; royalists and liberals all threw dry or wet flowers
at the neighbor within reach. Three steamboats at anchor, with musical
choruses, constituted the centre of the ever-changing groups. I had the
opportunity to salute, hurriedly and with surprise, and throw flowers
at, many acquaintances whom I had not seen for a long time. My friend
Schaffgotsch is passionately fond of walking, and he was responsible for
our returning to the railway station on foot--a distance of almost three
miles--at such a pace as I had not kept up in a long while. After that I
slept splendidly until nine, and am in a state of physical equilibrium
today such as I have not enjoyed for some time. As the rather dusty
promenades in the Thiergarten do not give me enough of a shaking-up in
the time that I have available for that purpose, Mousquetaire will
arrive here tomorrow, so that he, with his lively gallop, may play the
counterpart to the tune that politics is dancing in my head. My plan
about Berlin and the wedding immediately, etc., was certainly somewhat
adventurous when you look at it in cold blood, but I hope there will be
no change from July. If I am to be tormented, as you say, with an
"unendurable, dispirited, nervous being," it is all the same in the end
whether this torment will be imposed upon me by my _fiancee_ or--forgive
the ex