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10.5.23
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
Dearest Lou
Nothing but visitors and celebrations—Ernst and Eitingon have been here—are responsible for postponing my answer to your kind and understanding letter. However, I can now inform you that I can again speak, chew and work, indeed even smoking is permitted—to a certain moderate, cautious, so to speak petit bourgeois degree. The family doctor himself supplied the cigar holder for my birthday; the latter incidentally was celebrated as though I were a music hall star, or as though it were to be my last.
Even after the operation the prognosis is good. You realize that this means no more than a slight lessening of the uncertainty that is bound to hover over the years to come. Wife and daughter have nursed me tenderly.
I agree completely with your views about our helplessness in the face of physical, especially painful, suffering; like you I also find it— deplorable and, if one could reproach anyone personally, a dirty trick.
I have not done anything to deserve your husband's kind post-script and would like you to convey to him my warm and sincere thanks.
With best greetings and wishes,
Yours,
Freud