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Vienna, December 27, 1917
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
You will probably have understood why I haven't answered your next-to-last letter. I saw that you are filling up the waiting time with a repetition of the same trick—now, to be sure, already diminished, and not without good support from external events—, and I consoled myself with the conviction that you won't do it anymore when the provisional agreement has been surmounted.
I have sought out your incubus dream and enclose it herein. A bronze animal, as you express yourself pictorially, has not shown up here.
The shutdown of our journals is only a threat for the time being, and, in fact, not from Heller's quarter. Quite the contrary, he is now behaving downright amicably toward us, perhaps because his hostility has materialized in circumstances, so that he can go ahead and wait until the circumstances have done us in without his complicity and with his sympathy. Your plan of aid is impracticable because we can't start anything with Deuticke, who, on top of everything else, is very ill. Incidentally, I am in no hurry, and perhaps we can hold out.
Rank was here over the holidays for a short leave, not in the best shape, very much attached to the newspaper, where he is now the only mover. We took ourselves back to the old times for a few hours. When are you coming and when will your young lady give you a vacation?
Sachs is rather miserable, he can't stand freezing. As I see it, I am still the giant. Occasionally, something still occurs to me about the cs. problem. But I can't make up my mind about getting back to Lamarck. Perhaps our problem with him is like that of the two noble Poles and their bill:
“And because neither one could bear having the other one pay for him, neither one paid.'”1
Ernst has sick leave, is really anything but well, and wants to go to Dresden and Berlin after New Year's.
Kind regards to Frau G. and you, and many wishes for 1919,2 from which we await the greatest changes and decisions.