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Vienna, Thursday evening
February 7, 1884
Were I in the position, my Princess, to bestow decorations, you would receive as a reward for your last letter the most beautiful one, that of the White Carrier Pigeon, to be worn on a red ribbon. The letter arrived just as I had started to write my paper and when I had read it I felt so gay that my work went very fast. I had started at 3:30 and by nine I had finished; I leaped for joy- I never miss this exercise if there is the slightest reason for it-and then I meant to write to you. But I was interrupted by a visit-or rather, as a reward to myself I went to the Gasthaus, and so I am writing only today. I was not idle today, either. I copied out the excerpt for the Russian and gave it to him, then I finished the English manuscript and had it corrected by the American, and now I have still got to transcribe the latter and make a few corrections in the German manuscript, and then I am finished with it. Tomorrow I will take them both to Fleischl and then Amen.
I now have time to return once more to my patients and do some reading. I wonder how long it will be before I write something again. Not too long, I hope. A man must get himself talked about.
Silberstein was here again today; he is as devoted to me as ever. We became friends at a time when one doesn't look upon friendship as a sport or an asset, but when one needs a friend with whom to share things. We used to be together literally every hour of the day that was not spent on the school bench. We learned Spanish together, had our own mythology and secret names, which we took from some dialogue of the great Cervantes. Once in our Spanish primer we found a humorous-philosophical conversation between