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Vienna
August 6, 1878
Dear Friend
It is unfair of you to jeer at my haste. The filthy lucre runs through my fingers at such frightening speed that, with the honest man's fear of failing in my duties, I was trying to place my riches in your safekeeping. By my doing this today the proverbial weight is taken off my mind.
I thank you for the friendly way in which you helped me out of my embarrassment. If there is a God he will take note of your deed and repay you a thousandfold, and if there is not, then there exists at least one man who will remember it and consider it one more reason for remaining fond of you. I am also sending you herewith my collected works,1 not my complete ones as I have reason to suspect, for I am awaiting the correction of a third,2 and a fourth and fifth keep appearing in my prescient mind, which is startled by them like Macbeth by the ghosts of the English kings: “What! Will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?”