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444F
Vienna, Berggasse 19
4 May 1924
Dear Friend,
Your very conscientious report has completed my knowledge of events at the Congress in the most desirable manner. My heartfelt thanks for that. Also it did me a great deal of good to hear that real difficulties stood in the way of your coming to Vienna, so that its prevention did not depend on my will alone. It is very painful to me to think that of all people it was you, my rocher de bronce [sic],1 whom I kept away, while I had to see and speak to Emden, Jones, Laforgue,2 and Lévy.3
You must make a real effort to put yourself in my position if you are not to bear some ill-will towards me. Though apparently on the way to recovery, there is deep inside me a pessimistic conviction of the closeness of the end of my life, nourished by the never-ceasing petty torments and discomforts of the scar, a kind of senile depression centred around the conflict between irrational pleasure in life and sensible resignation. Accompanying this there is a need for rest and a disinclination for human contact, neither of which is satisfied because I cannot avoid working for six or even seven hours a day. If I am mistaken and this is only a passing phase, I shall be the first to confirm the fact and again put my shoulder to the wheel. If my forebodings are correct, I shall not fail, if sufficient time remains, to ask you quickly to come to see me.
The idea that my 68th birthday the day after tomorrow might be my last must have occurred to others too, for the city of Vienna, which usually waits until the 70th, has hastened to grant me the Bürgerrecht on that day.4 I have been informed that at midday on the 6th Professor Tandler,5 representing the mayor, and Dr Friedjung,6 a paediatrician and a district councillor, who is one of our people, are to pay me a ceremonial visit. This recognition is the work of the Social Democrats, who now rule the City Hall. Dr Friedjung shares my birthday but not, naturally, the year of birth.
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