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Vienna, Wednesday
January 21, 1885
My little sweetheart
All kinds of things have been happening, so forgive me if this is a bit muddled. There has been a rumor that the German Kaiser1 has died. But now he is supposed to be alive and will certainly outlive us all.
Today I handed in my application for the Dozentur and talked
to Prof. Ludwig and Meynert. The latter was decidedly optimistic and also mentioned very suggestively the neurological ward on which he is counting. I have an idea that if he gets it he will take me. There must have been a lot of talk about me this evening. Fleischl has been invited to Meynert's and is going to put in a good word for me, while Ludwig has gone to a restaurant to work on the dangerous Kundradt,2 the pathological anatomist.
And now for your letter. There is a lot to answer in it. First, if I will allow you to skate. Definitely not, I am too jealous for that. I myself cannot do it, and anyway wouldn't have the time to accompany you, and accompanied you would have to be. So drop that idea. Then I insist on your buying a decent rug up to the price of twenty-eight marks, which I will send you out of the earnings from my next lecture-at the moment I am quite poor. If you still have any money left, please use it for this purpose and I will pay you back.
Third, I really cannot see why you should be cold. Is there no stove, no wood in Wandsbek? Explanation urgently required. I trust it won't again come to the point of your not being able to write to me in one room because it's too cold and in the other because you are too often disturbed. That was the most terrible letter I have ever had from you, and one I certainly will not forget even if I live to be eighty-five and you were to give me a kiss every day, which is perhaps asking rather much! Darling, is it possible that you can be affectionate only in summer and that in winter you freeze up? Now sit down and answer me at once so that I will still have time to get myself a winter girl.
And what e