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Vienna, Tuesday
May 12, 1885
My precious little woman
I am as delighted about the new yes1 in your last letter as I was about the first one. Let us arrange things as you suggest if it is at all possible. I realize of course that the time of worry and trouble won't come to an end even then, but I think you realize
this too and will appreciate the fact that we shall be going through it together and that our greatest desire will have been fulfilled. This long waiting certainly makes us neither happier nor younger and, as you admit, it doesn't bring us to the end of worrying about our future. I take it that your consent is seriously meant and not inspired by some whim of the moment, and I am deeply happy about it; I can't express it in other words.
Now let me tell you that today I lectured for an hour in the Club on brain anatomy-actually for one person only, Prof. Obersteiner,2 because the others must have been very bored; but I enjoyed it and dealt not too badly with the difficult subject. I have also just written a letter to Prof. Mendel in Berlin, editor of a neurological journal, asking him to include a preliminary paper of mine; I am rather pleased with these things. But you mustn't get the idea that I am doing anything but brain anatomy these days.
I knew you would be pleased about Tischer; I did it only for your sake, for I am rather overawed by his high prices. I have so far received only one suit, which I wear in the mornings (ophthalmology is clean work) and take off in the afternoons when I go to the laboratory.
This business about Dr. R., which so horrified you, is nothing bad and certainly not new. Patronage it is, but not misplaced, for he really is an able man. There is no other way of becoming an assistant professor except by a recommendation from an associate professor.
What does it matter about the cross?3 We are not superstitious or piously orthodox.
Are you all right again, my darling? I am in excellent health. That bit of success in my work also helps me