In cool blood, I am certainly very grateful that it happened so.  What probably contributed much to it was the fact that a couple of very good pistols, which were originally intended to be used, were so loaded that for the moment they were quite useless, and we had to take those intended for the seconds, with which it was difficult to hit.  An official disturbance has interrupted me, and now I must close—­time is up.  Only I still want to say that I had consulted beforehand, about the duel, with old Stolberg, General Gerlach, Minister Uhden and Hans; they were all of opinion that it must be; Buechsel, too, saw no alternative, although he admonished me to desist.  I spent an hour in prayer, with him and Stolberg, the evening before.  I never doubted that I should have to appear, but I did doubt whether I should shoot at V. I did it without anger, and missed.  Now farewell, my dearly beloved mother.  Give love to father and every one from

Your faithful son, v.B.

Vienna, June 14, ’52.

My Beloved Heart,—­At this hour I ought to sit down and write a long report to his Majesty concerning a lengthy and fruitless negotiation which I had today with Count Buol, and concerning an audience with the Archduchess Empress-Dowager.  But I have just taken a promenade on the high ramparts all round the inner city, and from them seen a charming sunset behind the Leopoldsberg, and now I am much more inclined to think of you than of business.  I stood for a long time on the red Thor Tower, which commands a view of the Jaegerzeil and of our old-time domicile, the Lamb, with the cafe before it; at the Archduchess’ I was in a room which opens on the homelike little garden into which we once secretly and thoughtlessly found our way; yesterday I heard Lucia—­Italian, very good; all this so stirs my longing for you that I am quite sad and incapable.  For it is terrible to be thus alone in the world, when one is no longer accustomed to it; I am in quite a Lynaric mood.  Nothing but calls, and coming to know strangers, with whom I am always having the same talk.  Every one knows that I have not yet been here very long, but whether I was ever here before; that is the great question which I have answered two hundred times in these days, and happy that that topic still remains.  For folk bent on pleasure this may be a very pretty place, for it offers whatever is capable of affording outward diversion to people.  But I am longing for Frankfort as if it were Kniephof, and do not wish to come here by any means.  F. must lie just where the sun went down, over the Mannhartsberg yonder; and, while it was sinking here, it still continued shining with you for over half an hour.  It is terribly far.  How different it was with you here my heart, and with Salzburg and Meran in prospect; I have grown terribly old since then. * * * It is very cruel that we must spend such a long period of our brief life apart; that time is lost, then, and cannot