for you, that any power whatever should keep me here when I know that you are suffering and I could help and relieve you; and I am still at war with myself to determine what my duty is before God and man.  If I am not sooner there, then it is fairly certain that I shall arrive in Reinfeld with your father at Whitsuntide, probably a week from tomorrow.  The cause of your illness may lie deeper, or perhaps it is only that the odious Spanish flies have affected you too powerfully.  Who is this second doctor you have called in?  The frequent changing of doctors, and, on one’s own authority, using between-times all sorts of household remedies, or remedies prescribed for others, I consider very bad and wrong.  Choose one of the local doctors in whom you have the most confidence, but keep to him, too; do what he prescribes and nothing else, nothing arbitrary; and, if you have not confidence in any of the local men, we will both try to carry through the plan of bringing you here, so that you may have thorough treatment under the direction of Breiers, or some one else.  The conduct of your parents in regard to medical assistance, the obstinate refusal of your father, and, allied to that, your mother’s arbitrary changing and fixed prejudices, in matters which neither of them understand, seem to me, between ourselves, indefensible.  He to whom God has intrusted a child, and an only child at that, must employ for her preservation all the means that God has made available, and not become careless of them through fatalism or self-sufficiency.  If writing tires you, ask your mother to send us news.  Moreover, it would seem to me very desirable if one of your friends could be prevailed upon to go to you until you are better.  Whether a doctor can help you or not—­forgive me, but you cannot judge of that by your feelings.  God’s help is certainly decisive, but it is just He who has given us medicine and physician that, through them, His aid may reach us; and to decline it in this form is to tempt Him, as though the sailor at sea should deprive himself of a helmsman, with the idea that God alone can and will give aid.  If He does not help us through the means He has placed within our reach, then there is nothing left to do but to bow in silence under His hand.  If you should be able to come to Zimmerhausen after Whitsuntide, please write to that effect beforehand if possible.  If your illness should become more serious, I shall certainly leave the Landtag, and even if you are confined to your bed I shall be with you.  At such a moment I shall not let myself be restrained by such questions of etiquette—­that is my fixed resolve.  You may be sure of this, that I have long been helping you pray that the Lord may free you from useless despondency and bestow upon you a heart cheerful and submissive to God—­and upon me, also; and I have the firm confidence that He will grant our requests and guide us both in the paths that lead to Him.  Even though yours may often go to the left around the mountain, and mine to the right, yet they will meet beyond.