Go on with your “Valkyrie,” and permit me to adapt the proverb,

“Quand on prend du galon, on n’en saurait trop prendre,”

to your case in the following manner: 

“Quand on fait du sublime on n’en saurait trop faire, surtout quand ce n’est qu’une question de nature et d’habitude!”

Your

F.

Weymar, October 12th, 1855.

203.

November 16th, 1855.

Dearest Franz,

Thank the Child a thousand times for her letter, and tell her that I shall not send the album back till you return from here, because I want to write something good in it which will not be finished till then.

I must write many and reasonable things to the Princess, and that I cannot do at present.  So I remain in her debt also, but only to satisfy her.  She may see from this how much I value her letter.

I have not yet gone out into the air; but I am getting accustomed to my room, and do not particularly long for our autumn mists.  I am doing a little work too.  You are coming, are you not?

I should like to be silent till then and for ever, for whenever I speak or write it is sure to be something stupid.

Au revoir!!!

204.

Dear Franz,

I am making a tentative effort to rise from the sick bed on which
I have lain again exactly three weeks.

Carl Ritter has informed you of my condition.  The thorns of my existence have now been supplemented by blooming “roses.”  I have suffered from continual attacks of erysipelas in the face.  In the luckiest case I shall not be able to go out into the air this year, and during the whole winter I shall live in continual fear of relapses.  For the slightest excitement, accompanied by the least cold, may throw me back on my sick bed for two or three weeks at any moment.

I am now reaping the fruit of my stupid postponement of your visit, for I cannot possibly expect you to visit me in the present uncertain state of my health.  Anyhow, I thus relieve you of the burden which a visit in this evil, hard winter would no doubt have been to you.  As concerns myself, nothing can make my mood worse than it is.  I am getting accustomed to all kinds of trouble, and the disagreeable and the necessary and natural are to me convertible terms.

I long for news of you, of which you are too chary.

As soon as I get better and am accustomed to sitting up I shall write more.  For today a thousand greetings to the Altenburg.

Your

R. W.

Zurich, December 12th, 1855.

205.

Chronos has made another step across all our heads.  How can I write to you, dear poet, without telling you of the kind wishes which I and the Child entertain for you, and the desire we both of us have of seeing you again in the course of 1856?  I can assure you that if fate were to send me a messenger with the assurance of this, I should consider it the best New Year’s gift, although there are many things which I demand of it.