In my thoughts I must always ask you and our dad to forgive me for depriving you of the pleasure and the happiness of your old days, inasmuch as I transplant to such a distance the bright child-life, with all its dear cares, and take Johanna away a second time from her father's house; but I see no other way out of it, which would not be unnatural, or even wrong, and the strong arm which separated us when we hoped to be united can also unite us when we least expect it. You shall at least have the conviction, so far as human purpose can give it, that I shall wander, together with Johanna, with the strong staff of the Word of God, trough this dead and wicked activity of the world, whose nakedness will become more apparent to us in our new position than before, and that to the end of our joint pilgrimage my hand shall strive, in faithful love, to smooth Johanna's paths, and to be a warm covering to her against the breath of the great world. Your faithful son, v.B. Frankfort, May 18, '51. _My Darling_,--Frankfort is terribly tiresome; I am so spoiled by so much affection and so much business that I am only just beginning to suspect how ungrateful I always was to some people in Berlin, to say nothing of you and yours; but even the cooler measure of fellowship and party affiliation which came to me in Berlin may be called an intimate relationship compared with intercourse here, which is, in fact, nothing more than mutual mistrust and espionage, if there only were anything to spy out or to conceal! The people toil and fret over nothing but mere trifles, and these diplomats, with their consequential hair-splitting, already seem to me more ridiculous than the Member of the Second Chamber in the consciousness of his dignity. If foreign events do not take place, and those we over-smart Diet people can neither direct nor prognosticate, I know quite definitely now what we shall have accomplished in one, two, or five years, and am willing to effect it in twenty-four hours if the others will but be truthful and sensible for a single day. I have never doubted that they all use water for cooking; but such an insipid, silly water-broth, in which not a single bubble of mutton-suet is visible, surprises me. Send me Filöhr, the village-mayor, Stephen Lotke, and Herr von Dombrowsky, of the turnpike-house, as soon as they are washed and combed, and I shall cut a dash with them in diplomatic circles. I am making headlong progress in the art of saying nothing by using, many words; I write reports of many pages, which read nice and smooth as editorials; and if Manteuffel, after he has read them, can tell what they contain, he can do more than I. Each of us makes believe that he thinks the other is full of ideas and plans, if he would but speak out, and yet we none of us know a jot better than the man in the moon does what is to become of Germany. No mortal, not even the most malevolently skeptical Democrat, will believe what a vast amount of