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March 19, 1899
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Wilhelm,
One of the three long weeks before Easter is fortunately over; it sapped almost my entire store of energy. Now the anxious expectation: whether anything will interfere with it. I inspected Mela today; she looks radiant — and not in accord with any special date. The children all have a cough and complain of earaches. I hope the influenza does not open the door to any other epidemic. I take your not writing as proof that you are not well; by then you will have recovered again. In my work everything is surging to and fro, but I shall not attempt anything new until the meeting with you has turned my thoughts to the laws of the universe and the Easter vacation has not [?] made me more capable of entertaining new points of view. Not long ago I saw Schnitzler's Paracelsus;1 was amazed at how much a poet knows.
In expectation, with most cordial greetings,
Your
Sigm.
The reference is to a short, one-act play that describes the return of Paracelsus to Basel at the beginning of the sixteenth century and his meeting with a woman, Justina, still beautiful, whom he had loved as a student. She is now married to Cyprian. Paracelsus hypnotizes her, and in an altered state of consciousness she tells her husband, Anselm (a young Junker), her sister Cacilia, and Paracelsus the truth she has always withheld: that she had been in love with Paracelsus and would have left with him had he returned to take her; moreover, she was on the verge of sleeping with Anselm as a farewell to her youth. The play, a lovely work, is about dreams, truth, madness, and love.
Paracelsus was published in , Die dramatischen Werke (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1961), 1: 465-498.