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Paris
November 24, 1885
My precious sweetheart
… Both Mama's and Minna's letters are very nice and require an answer. I am not at all averse to writing and the Republic is pleased that I am in Paris because I spend so much money on stamps. Quite agree about the Christmas present for Frau Gehrke.1 It is to come from Paris, isn't it?
I am really very comfortably installed now and I think I am changing a great deal. I will tell you in detail what is affecting me.
Charcot, who is one of the greatest of physicians and a man whose common sense borders on genius, is simply wrecking all my aims and opinions. I sometimes come out of his lectures as from out of Nôtre Dame, with an entirely new idea about perfection. But he exhausts me; when I come away from him I no longer have any desire to work at my own silly things; it is three whole days since I have done any work, and I have no feelings of guilt. My brain is sated as after an evening in the theater. Whether the seed will ever bear any fruit, I don't know; but what I do know is that no other human being has ever affected me in the same way. Even old Ricchetti, who has known all the important men of his time, is absolutely bowled over by him. When I get home I feel completely resigned and say to myself: the great problems are for men between fifty and seventy; for young people like us there is Life itself. My ambition would be satisfied by a long life spent learning to understand something of the world, and my plans for the future are that we get married, love each other and work with the object of enjoying life together instead of exerting every ounce of my energy trying to pass the post first, like a race horse—in other words, trying to build myself a home that would involve such effort and privation that I couldn't expect to be granted more than two or three years of mental health. Or am I under the influence of this magically attractive and repulsive city? If so, it would be quite an indirect one. Have you anything to s