"One thing I have in my heart to wish for you, my dear friend--that you
could take life with a little of the unreflecting simplicity of those
who accept--what the moment offers without troubling themselves as to
the why and the wherefore. You bow to those high powers who, for
instance, have caused you to be banished from Berlin; then submit
yourself to those still higher ones, who let you live and feel and
think. Do not fight against the natural instincts which lead you to
cling to life and love. Your fears that you have nothing to offer a
wife are groundless. There are women who do not seek their happiness in
the vanities which you very properly detest. Do all you can to find
such a woman. Bestow life as you have received it, and leave your
offspring cheerfully to the care of those powers who rule over your own
life and destiny. For my part, I should be very sorry to see your race
die out.
"And why reproach yourself that you provide no one with daily bread?
Man does not live by bread alone; and by simply being what you are, you
supply many people--myself for instance--with a pleasure in life and a
belief in your future career that is worth more than daily bread.
"Bhani thanks you for your kind message. She incloses two verses for
you, of her own composition. Here you have them in prose
translation--'My beloved master and his humble handmaid miss the dear
friend with the soft eyes and gentle voice. We live as in a bungalow in
the season of rains--clouds and ever clouds, and no sun. When will the
sky be blue, and the sunshine come again? and when wilt thou eat rice
once more at the table of my lord?' In the original it certainly sounds
much prettier.
"Let me know soon what you think of doing, and be assured of the hearty
affection of your old
"SCHROTTER.
"POSTSCRIPT: Just read the enclosed extract from my to-day's Times.
That man's development was as logical as Haber's."
In the letter Wilhelm found, beside Bhani's poem, written in delicate
Sanscrit characters on yellow paper, a cutting from an English
newspaper, in which he read that a Nihilist of the name of Barinskoi,
in St. Petersburg, had for some time excited the suspicions of his
confederates by his luxurious and showy style of living. In order to
discover the source from which he drew the money for it, they appointed
one of their female members to be his mistress. She had shared in his
extravagances, and soon obtained proofs that he was in the service of
the police, and sold his fellow Nihilists. A secret court condemned him
to death, and a few days ago he had been found dead in his rooms, his
throat cut, and his body literally hacked to pieces.
In January Wilhelm received an unusual visitor. It was a leader of the
workingmen of Altona, who told him, without further circumlocution,
that the Socialists had kept their eye upon him, had found out where he
was living, and now sent him, the Altona man, to see if anything could
be made of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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