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Vienna, August 13, 1876
Dear Berganza,
So you've become a martyr? Perhaps you would like to be canonized after this life, which would not be all that difficult, considering that the great Christopher Columbus is going to be canonized one of these days,1 and all he did was to discover another more beautiful and happier land, which the Pope and the Church finished off? And you, who have sacrificed your health on the altar of canon law the better to discover and proclaim in public how bishops used to dress and the reasons they gave to discard their unwanted “nieces,” would you not have greater expectations than Columbus? But I am hopeful that it will be a long time yet before the proverb de mortuis nil nisi bene2 applies to you—and hence repeat what I have said many times before to you, namely that you have studied without rhyme or reason and that you deserve some kind of punishment, severe enough to be felt and remembered. It is thus right that fate, a very severe taskmaster, should make you copy out “Constantinquelle” a thousand times. But enough of your punishment because we must speak of other things.
In the first place [you will not yet have heard] of the death of Fernan Caballero, or Cecilia Böhl de Faber, who was a woman, our author, and the daughter of a German businessman, and who spent the first twelve years of her childhood in Germany.3 (interrupted)
A grand design rules this letter, which I have been writing for three days without being able [to finish].
My mother and my sisters have recently arrived, speaking marvels of you …