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Vienna, August 14, 1878
Querido Berganza,
Your letters are slightly shorter than the intervals between them. I wonder why you do not come here if you are so bored where you are. You would save time that way. Your account of your doings in Braila is presumably incomplete. “Franconian woman” is presumably a generic term.
Your scientific efforts deserve every credit. You would undoubtedly have become a Humboldt1 had that cursed jurisprudence not diverted your energies from the contemplation of nature. If, with your usual modesty, you should reject this appraisal, please remember your attempts to concoct the great elixir from various organic substances, your unquenchable thirst for closer acquaintanceship with flies' legs under the microscope, and your thorough grasp of my collected works, which are not written for a popular audience. Your latest find seems to concern Xiphias gladius, the swordfish; I offer this opinion with all the caution that experience has taught me to attach to such “actions at a distance.”2 I have enriched the last few weeks by reading tales of exploration in Africa. I have read Baker, Schweinfurth, and Stanley.3 It is all very charming, but a little like those fairy tales in which the prince, with one stroke of his sword, slays one horrible dragon and invincible sorcerer after another, so much so that even the most horribly hostile monsters cease to frighten us, experience having taught us not to take them too seriously. None of these modern travelers who kills his ration of 100-200 savages is ever wounded by so much as an arrow. One sees that there is still a God above. More recently, of course, a few of them have been killed, and to that extent a certain gravity has entered the picture.
In addition, I have been reading Macaulay and advise you to do likewise. It is not possible that Macaulay should be unobtainable in a port city. The last piece I read was on Bertrand Barère,4 and I am left with the vivid impression that a man may as soon be executed