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Vienna
August 23, 1883
Treasured princess
Just back from my country practice to find your sweet letter with the good news that you are feeling well and all the pleasant things you don't tire of telling me every day. I had a talk today with a colleague in the hospital, Dr. Widder, who said he considers it a great mistake to marry as long as one has no money and that it will take me eight years to get anywhere. All this he was saying not from worldly wisdom, etc, but out of the innocence of his heart, as he sees it. Defending my case valiantly, I told him he just doesn't know my girl, who is willing to wait for me indefinitely, that I would marry her even if she had turned thirty-a matron, he interrupted-that I would bring it off by starting work elsewhere, that a man has to take some risks and that what I stand to gain is worth any risk. He admitted that within two years I could be earning two thousand gulden, and showed me a letter from a Dr. K. in Brünn, who hopes to earn five to six thousand florins in the course of a year, etc. He was not entirely serious about the gloomy