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Budapest, January 9, 19171
Dear Professor,
Frau Gizella, whose judgment is authoritative to me, does not share my and Ignotus's reservations. I, too, don't find your brusque rejection of Harmonia justified; we should have waited to see whether and how they guaranteed the stipulations that you were going to make. I didn't intend the increase of the honorarium to 2,000 crowns to mean that the “not kosher” aspects of the matter would be corrected by it; I only meant that nowadays you ought not to be cheaper. What was “kosher” was the presupposition of your coming here at all. If you have nothing against it, I will reveal myself to Harmonia as the cause of your refusal and, in the event that they give me enough guarantees, revive the affair.
I am sending you enclosed, with the request that you return it, the copy of the aphorisms,2 which perhaps justify my collaboration on the work on Lamarck. The sentences written in []3 come from the time after your visit to Pápa.
In principle, I agree with the manner in which you conceive of our working together. But how it will be in practice very much depends on the condition of my health. I must, it seems, again importune you with this subject.
The psychic upswing that I last informed you about was immediately wrestled down by influenza. I felt physically very weak, even after the cessation of fever, and Dr. Lévy ascertained an increase in the Basedow symptoms, as well as a renewed flare-up of the nephrosis.4 Naturally I immediately used this situation for a psychic depression, which even Gizella's company didn't alleviate. Dr. Lévy wants to obtain eight weeks' leave for me, of which, according to his way of thinking, I would have to spend at least four weeks in the mountains.
The leave should have tempted me, in any case—but this didn't occur. I postpone the request for leave from one day to the other.—In the meantime, I reduced the number of my hours from six to five, which still tires me very much.
The leave (which, in Dr. Lévy's view