I kept up my literary labors as far as my time permitted. I wrote novels,—_Doras Bekenntnisse_, _Ketten und Verkettungen_,—and carried about with me the scheme of a larger work, _Inventarium einer Seele_. My husband got very little opportunity for writing, for now his employer had set him to work also at designing architectural plans. And he did it. How he made a success of it I do not understand to this day; but it is a fact that several houses and castles in the vicinity of Tiflis were built from his plans. As he played the piano without having taken music lessons, so he made architectural designs without having studied architecture. He had already picked up enough of the Georgian language to be able to get along with the native workmen and contractors. In the meantime I was perfecting myself in Russian, which I had already begun to study in Vienna with a view to the prospect of residing in Zugdidi as the Dedopali had planned for me. That castle, by the way, was not even then finished; nor was it finished during the lifetime of its mistress. During our sojourn in Tiflis I underwent an illness, the only one in my whole life. The period of this illness is among my sweetest, dearest recollections. I could not eat: my stomach refused everything that I took. I could not walk: if I tried to take a few steps, I fell down. Certainly that does not sound as if one were bringing up sweet, dear recollections; and yet God knows it was a happy time. I was in a state of half-stupefied faintness, lying down gave me a comfortable sense of rest, and My Own’s care and assiduity and tenderness cradled me into a deep quiet consciousness of bliss. This lasted about six weeks; then I was well again, and we two were a good bit more in love with each other than ever. XX ZUGDIDI The capital of Mingrelia · Our little house · Labors on the Murat estate · Social life at the Murats’ and the Dedopali’s · Lonely summer at Zugdidi · New literary labors · Prototype of _Es Löwos_ · New horizons · Study together We changed our residence from Tiflis to Kutais again, then to Gordi and to Zugdidi, and to many other places; I cannot here recount in chronological order and in detail all the migrations that filled up our nine years of the Caucasus. Nor was it external events that were the “important thing” for us; it was inner experiences, there in our exile, that made of us two wholly new persons,—two happy persons, two good persons.