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Tegel, 8.5.1930
My dear Lou
I do not want to give you time to suspect that your letter has gone astray. The postmark of this reply will tell you something of what has been happening to us just recently. But it cannot tell you that I (we) were ten days in the Vienna Cottage Sanatorium beforehand. Heart and intestines would not co-operate any more and I was anxious to get to Berlin, so I had to submit to that extent. In the Sanatorium I learnt that health was to be had at a certain cost, and since it is the same with health as with the Sibylline Books I paid the price. That is to say, I have given up smoking completely, after it has served me for exactly fifty years as sword and buckler in the battle of life. Thus I am now better than I was, but not happier. Here Schröder is measuring me for a new prosthesis. So I shall not see Vienna again for some time.
I find it difficult to be as discreet in my medical report as you. Perhaps indeed you are too discreet, dear Lou. I gather from your letter that you are at home again, but that you are still lying on your back and in pain. Why you must be in pain I still have no clear idea, even after Anna's account. In my view one can allow