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Vienna, April 25, 1900
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Wilhelm,
Well, do you realize now that Rome cannot be forced? I frequently have fatalistic convictions of this kind which serve my inertia very well. I am really not making any headway. Upon receipt of your letter a resolution to spend a few days with you by the ocean in August flashed through my mind; a large overpayment by Miss R. had somewhat enriched me that day. But if the Lord subtracts these sums somewhere else in the next few moments, then nothing will come of it after all. I am sure you had a more pleasant time with your wife in Dresden than you might have had with me in Weimar. I certainly would not have come; the sight of the five sick children was too pitiful, harmless as the matter was on the whole.
Yesterday I gave a lecture on Zola's Fécondité1 before my society.2 I am always ill prepared; actually I start only an hour before — much as one writes a German composition in school. During the night from Monday to Tuesday, I dreamed inordinately of this lecture.3 I explained that I had to go home to fetch the book, did not find the way, and got lost; the weather was miserable, I made no headway; and during all these delays I worked out part of the talk. The obstacles, therefore, were only pretexts to gain time for working on it. The brethren, moreover, were unkind and scornful of me — conduct that is apt, quite surely, to reduce my interest in the success of the lecture. The “miserable weather” is borrowed from a patient who at the moment arouses my liveliest interest because I finally — in the sixth season — am on the track of her secret. Mistakes in technique prevented me from finding it sooner.
Spring has arrived here as well. The trees in front of my window have delicate reddish leaves. I am curious about what spring will bring forth in you; I am content with a mood of equanimity and physical well-being. I forgot to write to you that my fears that my eldest sister's trip from New York to Berlin were due to an im