denburg, never opened a letter until he had placed pen, ink,
and paper before him, and that he then and there, immediately after the
first reading, wrote down his answer. Thus he was able to meet
comfortably the demands of an immense correspondence. If I could have
imitated this virtue, so many people would not now be complaining of my
silence. But this time your dear letter just received has roused in me
such a desire to answer, by recalling to my mind all the fullness of our
life during the summer, that I am writing these lines, if not
immediately after the first reading, at least on awaking the next
morning.

I think I anticipated that the good _Pandora_ would slow down somewhat
when she reached home again. Life in Toeplitz was really too favorable to
this sort of work, and your meditations and efforts were so steadily and
undividedly centred upon it, that an interruption could not help calling
forth a pause. But leave it alone; there is so much done on it already
that, at the right moment, the remainder will, in all likelihood, come
of its own accord.

I cannot blame you for declining to compose the music to _Faust_. My
proposition was somewhat ill-considered, like the undertaking itself.
It can very well rest in peace for another year; for the trouble which I
had in working over the _Resolute Prince_[34] has about exhausted the
inclination which we must feel when we set about things of that sort.
This piece has indeed turned out beyond all expectation, and it has
given much pleasure to me and to others. It is no small undertaking to
conjure up a work written almost two hundred years ago, for an entirely
different clime, for a people of entirely different customs, religion,
and culture, and to make it appear fresh and new to the eyes of a
spectator. For nowhere is anything antiquated and without direct appeal
more out of place than on the stage.

Touching my works you shall, before everything else, receive the
thirteenth volume. It is very kind of you not to neglect the _Theory of
Color_; and the fact that you absorb it in small doses will have its
good effect too. I know very well that my way of handling the matter,
natural as it is, differs very widely from the usual way, and I cannot
demand that every one should immediately perceive and appropriate its
advantages. The mathematicians are foolish people, and are so far from
having the least idea what my work means that one really must overlook
their presumption.