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323F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
5 October 1917
Dear Friend,
Your letter gave me great but painful pleasure. How much has changed since we last saw each other, and not everything for the better.
When I think of the time when you told me that it was no longer an act of martyrdom to be called my pupil.1 The enclosure with this letter,2 unless it remains in the hands of the censor, illustrates one of these changes. If you find me cross and annoyed, you will know why.
Csorbató was absolutely beautiful, but tomorrow we shall have been in Vienna for five weeks. We hurried because our Ernst has come to Vienna from Isonzo as a patient. So he missed the 11th battle. His suffering is a return of his earlier stomach trouble, supposedly caused by an ulcer; but it will probably turn out to be the gall-bladder. At present he is at home on leave, which he is striving to get extended, cheerful and glad of the rest. He just could not stand it any longer. Instead, Martin is now in the same area, Oli in Cracow, and perhaps after a few weeks he too will be down there.
After a few days I got a great deal of work, and am now working for 8-9 hours a day with nine patients. It amuses me and, strangely enough, has done much good to my health, to which the certainty of avoiding the otherwise inevitable bankruptcy substantially contributes. My income is now the same as before the war, but the value of money has changed greatly. My writing—-I had some little things in progress—-will be held up for only a short time.
Your praise of the Lectures pleased me greatly, though my opinion of them does not accord with yours. I hope you will still discover their great deficiencies and not leave them unmentioned in your review.
Ferenczi is working assiduously in Budapest and is close to bringing his fifteen-year-old heart saga to a happy ending. Reik really is in Montenegro. Eitingon was our guest in Vienna for a few hours on his way back from Karlsbad. Not long ago I had a good, warm-hearted letter from Frau Dr H