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 Filoehr, 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 charlatanism and consequential pomposity there is in this diplomacy.  But now I have done enough scolding, and want to tell you that I am well, and that I was very glad and gave thanks to the Lord that, according to your last letter, all was well with you, and that I love you very much, and look at every pretty villa, thinking that perhaps our babies will be running about in it in summer.  Do see that you get the girls to come along, or if they absolutely refuse, bring others from there with whom we are already somewhat acquainted.  I don’t care to have a Frankfort snip in the room, or with the children; or we must take a Hessian girl, with short petticoats and ridiculous head-gear; they are half-way rural and honest.  For the present I shall rent a furnished room for myself in the city; the inn here is too expensive.  Lodgings, 5 guilders per day; two cups of tea, without anything else, 36 kreutzers (35 are 10 silbergroschen), and, served as the style is here, it is insulting.  Day before yesterday I was at Mayence; it is a charming region, indeed.  The rye is already standing in full ears, although the weather is infamously cold every night and morning.  The excursions by rail are the best things here.  To Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Odenwald, Hamburg, Soden, Wiesbaden, Bingen, Ruedesheim, Niederwald, is a leisurely day’s journey; one can stay there for five or six hours and be here again in the evening; hitherto I have not yet availed myself of it, but shall do so, so that I may escort you when you are here.  Rochow left for Warsaw at nine o’clock last night; he will arrive there day after tomorrow at noon, and will most likely be here again a week from today.