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Vienna, October 26, 1874
Dear Friend,
Your surprise at my silence is not all that unfounded. Though I sent you a fairly long and weary letter yesterday,1 I am following the first with a second immediately upon receipt of your own, just in case the first be lost and cause us both groundless concern. The mystery, incidentally, is easily solved: I would have had time a thousand times over to tell you in five lines that I am well but, by composing so peculiar a document, I might well have heightened your anxiety and given you a basically false idea of how I apportion my time. I preferred to write a long and detailed letter but had to postpone it from one day to the next and could only finish it yesterday, i.e., Sunday.
So my fourteen days' silence has no graver cause than that. Incidentally, in your place I should have had the same, and worse, fears, for I know perfectly well that he who changes his place of residence is more testy and more subject to worry and unjustified assumptions than he who has stayed put, goes his accustomed way, and has no reason whatsoever to think that anything untoward may have happened.
Still, I do not believe that you will behave toward me as affectionate mothers do toward their children, suffering pangs of despair whenever they see them in danger and thrashing them when they have been rescued; that you will in no way make me atone for the fears you have suffered on my account but will quickly let me know