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Vienna, Sunday, 3 P.M.
Sept. 9, 1883
My sweetheart
Don't you ever again say that you are cold and cannot find the right words; you write such unspeakably sweet, such movingly tender letters that I could answer them only with a long kiss, holding you lovingly in my arms. I hope one day it will be nothing but a pleasant memory when I tell you how I have yearned for you and I will never quite believe it when I really have you
with me. I daren't think much about it for fear that my patience to bear it till then would melt away.
Now, in answer to all your dear questions, let me point out that I am not such a sick man as you think. Since those bad days that were more of an interruption of health than an actual illness, I feel very well; the inactivity suits me for a short time, and if nothing comes of the Baden project I am not to be pitied; as for Kaschau, it is off, as you will know today. I really have no intention of being lazy from now on, I only mean to renounce the exhausting pursuit of distinction and, as you say, keep myself productive and capable of enjoying our life together. I have always thought that there is a short and a long way of achieving something; if the short one is barred to me I will confidently take the long one, and this is precisely what is happening to me at the moment. I was enchanted to learn that you are so ambitious for me, my sweet child; in the beginning, I wasn't; I was seeking in science the satisfaction which the effort of searching and the moment of discovery offer; I never was one of those people who can't bear the thought of being washed away by death before they have scratched their names on the rock amidst the waves. But when I think what I would be like now if I hadn't found you-lacking ambition, lacking the joy in the lighter pleasures of the world, lacking any fascination with the magic of gold, and endowed at the same time with very moderate intellectual and no material means whatever-I would just have strayed miserably about and