to the children, covering up Midget, with sensible speeches, and father sitting at his desk smoking, the mayor beside him, and mammy bolt-upright on her sofa, by wretched light, one hand lying on the arm-rest, or holding Musee Francais close before her eyes.  God grant that at this moment everything at Reinfeld is going as smoothly as this.  I have at last received a letter from Hans, one that is very charming, and, contrary to his custom, mysterious, in view of the post-office spies.  You may imagine how Senfft writes to me under these circumstances.  I received an unsigned letter from him the other day, out of which the most quick-witted letter-bandit would have been at a loss to decipher what he was driving at.  If you occasionally come across some unintelligible notices at the tail end of the Observer, they will thus seem to you more puzzling still, and to the blockhead who breaks open this letter they will remain unintelligible, even if I tell you that they are a part of my correspondence.  Only give me frequent tidings, my beloved heart, even if short ones, so that I may have the assurance that you are alive and well.  A have picked the enclosed leaves for you in the garden of old Amschel Rothschild, whom I like, because he is simply a haggling Jew, and does not pretend to be anything else, and, at the same time, a strictly orthodox Jew, who touches nothing at his dinners, and eats only “undefiled” food.  “Johann dage vid you some bread for de deers,” he said his servant as he came out to show me his garden, in which there were some tame fallow deer.  “Baron, dat blant costs me two thousand guilders, honor bride, two thousand guilders gash; I vill let you have it for one thousand or, if you vant it for nuddings, he shall bring id to your house.  God knows I abbrejiate you highly, Baron; you are a nize man, a brave man.”  With that he is a little, thin gray imp of a man, the patriarch of his tribe, but a poor man in his palace, childless, a widower, cheated by his servants, and ill-treated by aristocratically Frenchified and Anglicized nephews and nieces who will inherit his treasures without gratitude and without love.  Good-night, my angel.  The clock is striking twelve; I want to go to bed and read chap. ii. of the Second Epistle of St. Peter.  I am now doing that in a systematic way, and, when I have finished St. Peter, at your recommendation I shall read the He-brews, which I do not know at all as yet.  May God’s protection and blessing be with you all.

Your most faithful v.B.

Frankfort, July 3, 1851.

My Pet,—­Day before yesterday I very thankfully received your letter and the tidings that you are all well.  But do not forget when you write to me that the letters are opened not by me alone, but by all sorts of postal spies, and don’t berate particular persons so much in them, for all that is immediately reported and debited to my account; besides, you do people injustice.  Concerning my