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Vienna, Thursday
October 5, 1882
To whom else but to my deeply beloved, most ardently worshiped Martha should I report on the outcome of my visit to Prof. Nothnagel?1 Don't be cross, my lovely girl (whose charm at noon today is still confusing me), if I initiate you into the intricate byways and conditions to which my struggle for existence has brought me. It is after all not just my battle and interest, we are so intimately connected, I am so unspeakably happy that you are mine, so certain of your interest, that everything becomes important to me only when you share it. Even if the outcome was not exactly what I had desired, it was nevertheless quite honorable and I see no reason to abandon hope for a better future so long as you, my angelic girl, can put up with me.
Well, I went to see N. with my collected works and a recommendation from Meynert.2 The house he lives in is new, hardly finished, the flat reeks of varnish, the waiting room simply magnificent. On the wall hangs a picture showing four children, a beautiful boy who in twenty years will be snatching the best jobs from the medical students, a little girl with hints of potential beauty for whom within ten years the young men will be fighting at students’ balls: both