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March 7, 1897
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Wilhelm,
Your wife has risen once again like a meteor in our midst and as usual has outshone everybody and everything, so that next to her the others gave the impression of those eyeless fish that live in the depths of the sea. Unfortunately I saw very little of her; she found me dead tired, a consequence of my present ten- to eleven-hour workday. She let me know that you have found many new things and are looking forward to Easter. The latter, at least, is true in my case as well. It is still a long way off.
I have remained silent for a longer period of time because I noticed that at present you could not answer my letters overflowing with details, because I do not want to deplete myself completely before the congress, and because I was — once again — very tired (overdetermined!). Now I am having a much better time of it. I have not yet finished a single case; am still struggling with the difficulties of treatment and of understanding, which depending on my mood appear to me larger or smaller. On the whole, my constitution is still holding up.
March 17. You surely could not have guessed how very moved I was by your glorious simile of the dying Spartans. It would have impressed me on other occasions as well, but it reached me at precisely the moment when I was ready to give up for lost my Mathilde, who has fallen ill with septic diphtheria, and it comforted me. Today, it seems to me, there has been a decided improvement, which fills us with hope. Uncle Rie really did everything one could and in these circumstances always presents his best side. He and Kassowitz1 were against the injections recommended by Behring.
I hope that what follows will not spoil the prospect of meeting