Your faithful son, v.B.
Vienna, June 14, '52.
My Beloved Heart,—At this hour I ought to sit down and write a long report to his Majesty concerning a lengthy and fruitless negotiation which I had today with Count Buol, and concerning 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 Jägerzeil and of our old-time domicile, the Lamb, with the café 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 find myself once more on the old, tiresome Thuringian railroad I shall be out of myself, and still more so when I catch a glimpse of our light from Bockenheim; I must travel about nine hundred miles thither, not including two hundred and fifty miles from Pesth back to this place. How gladly I shall undertake them, once I am seated in the train! I shall probably abandon my trip by way of Munich; from this place to M. is a post-trip of fifty hours; by water still longer; and I shall have to render a verbal report in Berlin, anyway. About politics I can, fortunately, write nothing; for, even if the English courier who takes this to Berlin is a safeguard against our post-office, the Taxis scoundrels will, nevertheless, get hold of it.
Be sure to write me detailed information as to your personal condition. Greet mother, our relations, if they are still there, Leontine, the children, Stolberg, Wentzel, and all the rest. Farewell my angel. God preserve you.
Your most faithful v.B.
Ofen, June 23, '52.
My Darling,—I have just left the steamer, and do not know how better to utilize the moment at my disposal until Hildebrand follows with my things than by sending you a love-token from this far-easterly but pretty spot. The Emperor has graciously assigned me quarters in his palace, and I am sitting here in a large vaulted chamber at the open window, into which the evening bells of Pesth are pealing. The view outward is charming. The castle stands high; immediately below me the Danube, spanned by the suspension-bridge; behind it Pesth, which would remind you of Dantzig, and farther away the endless plain extending far beyond Pesth, disappearing in the bluish-red dusk of evening. To the left of Pesth I look up the Danube, far, very far, away; to my left, i.e., on the right-hand shore, it is fringed first by the city of Ofen, behind it hills like the Berici near Venetia blue and bluer, then bluish-red in the evening sky, which glows behind. In the midst of both cities is the large sheet of water as at Linz, intersected by the suspension-bridge and a wooded island. It is really splendid; only you, my angel, are lacking for me to enjoy this prospect with you; then it would be quite nice. Then, too, the road hither, at least from Gran to Pesth, would have pleased you. Imagine Odenwald and Taunus moved close together, the waters of the Danube filling the interval; and occasionally, particularly near Wisserad, a little Dürrenstein-Agstein. The shady side of the trip was the sunny side; it burned as if they wanted tokay to grow on the steamer, and the crowd of travelers was large; but, just imagine, not one Englishman; it must be that they have not yet discovered Hungary. For the rest, there were queer fellows enough, dirty and washed, of all Oriental and Occidental nations. * * * By this time I am becoming impatient as to Hildebrand's whereabouts; I am lying in the window, half musing in the moonlight, half waiting for him as for a mistress, for I long for a clean shirt. * * * If you were here for only a moment, and could contemplate now the dull, silvery Danube, the dark hills on a pale-red background, and the lights which are shining up from Pesth below, Vienna would lose much in your estimation compared to Buda-Pescht, as the Hungarian calls it. You see I am not only a lover, but also an enthusiast, for nature. Now I shall soothe my excited blood with a cup of tea, after Hildebrand has actually put in an appearance, and shall then go to bed and dream of you, my love. Last night I had only four hours of sleep, and the court here is terribly matutinal; the young gentleman himself rises as early as five o 'clock, so that I should be a bad courtier if I were to sleep much longer. Therefore I bid you good-night from afar, with a side-glance at a gigantic teapot and an enticing plate of cold jellied cuts, tongue, as I see, among the rest. Where did I get that song that occurs to me continually today—"Over the blue mountain, over the white sea-foam, come, thou beloved one, come to thy lonely home"? I don't know who must have sung that to me, some time in auld lang syne. May God's angels keep you today as hitherto.
Your most faithful v.B.
The 24th.
After having slept very well, although on a wedge-shaped pillow, I bid you good-morning, my heart. The whole panorama before me is bathed in such a bright, burning sun that I cannot look out at all without being blinded. Until I begin my calls I am sitting here breakfasting and smoking all alone in a very spacious apartment—four rooms, all thickly vaulted, two something like our dining-room in size, thick walls as at Schönhausen, gigantic nut-wood closets, blue silk furnishings, a profusion of large spots on the floor, an ell in size, which a more excited fancy than mine might take for blood, but which I decidedly declare to be ink; an unconscionably awkward scribe must have lodged here, or another Luther repeatedly hurled big inkstands at his opponents. * * * Exceedingly strange figures, brown, with broad hats and wide trousers, are floating about on long wooden rafts in the Danube below. I regret I am not an artist; I should like to let you see these wild faces, mustached, long-haired with excited black eyes, and the ragged, picturesque drapery which hangs about them, as they appeared to me all day yesterday. * * * Farewell, my heart. God bless you and our present and future children.
Your