The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10. Коллектив авторов
window, separated from the sea by an island of rocks, set in a steep frame of mountains with woods and houses, below to the left city and harbor. My old friend Galen, who is taking the baths here, with wife and son, received me most warmly; I bathed with him at ten, and after breakfast we walked, or, rather, crawled, through the heat up to the citadel, and sat for a long time on a bench there, the sea a hundred feet below us, near us a heavy fortress-battery, with a singing sentry. This hill or rock would be an island did not a low tongue of land connect it with the mainland. This tongue of land separates two inlets from each other, so you get towards the north a distant view of the sea from the citadel, towards the east and west a view of both inlets, like two Swiss lakes, and towards the south of the tongue of land, with the town on it, and behind it, landward, mountains as high as the heavens. I wish I could paint you a picture of it, and if we both were fifteen years younger then we would take a trip here together. Tomorrow, or day after, I go back to Bayonne. * * * I am very much sunburned, and should have liked best to float on the ocean for an hour today; the water bears me up like a piece of wood. It is still just cool enough to be pleasant. By the time one gets to the dressing-room one is almost dry, and I put on my hat, only, and take a walk in my peignoir. The ladies bathe fifty paces away—custom of the country. * * * I do not like the Spaniards so well as I like their country; they are not polite, talk too loud, and the conditions are in many ways behind those in Russia. Custom-houses and passport annoyances without end, an incredible number of turnpike tolls, four francs for one hour's drive, or else I should stay here still longer, instead of bathing in Biarritz, where a bathing-suit is necessary. Love to our dear parents and children. Farewell, my angel.
Your v.B.
Biarritz, August 4, '62.
* * * I am sitting in a corner room of the Hôtel de l'Europe, with a charming lookout over the blue sea, which drives its white foam between wonderful cliffs and against the light-house. I have a bad conscience, seeing so many beautiful things without you. If one could only bring you hither through the air, I would go right back again to San Sebastian. Imagine the Siebengebirge with the Drachenfels placed by the sea; next to it Ehrenbreitstein, and between the two an arm of the sea, somewhat wider than the Rhine, forcing its way into the land, and forming a round bay behind the mountains. In this you bathe in water transparently clear, and so heavy and salty that you can lie easily right on top of it and can look through the wide gate of rocks to the sea, or landward, where the mountain chains tower up one after another ever higher and ever bluer. The women of the middle and lower classes are strikingly pretty, sometimes beautiful; the men surly and impolite, and the comforts of life to which we are accustomed in civilized lands are entirely lacking. In this respect I find Russia pleasanter to travel in than Spain. What actually drove me out of the country was the swinishness in certain indispensable arrangements, and then the cheating in the hotels, and the tolls. The heat there is no worse than here, and doesn't bother me; on the contrary, I am very well, thank Heaven. Day before yesterday there was a storm whose like I have never seen. I had to make three attempts before I succeeded in climbing the flight of four steps at the head of the pier. Pieces of stone and of trees flew through the air; so I unfortunately gave up my place in a sailing-vessel for Bayonne, as I didn't believe it possible that all would be quiet and cheerful again in four hours' time; so I missed a charming sail along the coast, stayed one day longer in San Sebastian, and left yesterday by the diligence, rather uncomfortably packed in between attractive little Spanish women, to whom I could not speak a single word. Still, they understood Italian enough for me to make clear to them my satisfaction with their exterior. Gr. Gallen and wife were very kind to me. As I was looking for a fan, they presented me with theirs for you; it is simple, but painted in style characteristic of the country. You would like the wife very much; he, too, is a good fellow, but she amounts to more intellectually. I got Bernhard's long-expected letter today. He looks very black over politics, is expecting another child, and is building barns and stables. I long for news from you and the children. * * * Dearest love to all.
Your most faithful v.B.
Biarritz, August 10, '62.
_My Beloved Heart,– * * * I am living about as at Stolpemünde, only without champagne; I drank some with Orloff today, for the first time since I left Paris. In the afternoon I wander about among the cliffs, heaths, and fields, see orchards with aloe, figs, almonds, and borders of tamarinds, then I do some target-shooting, take my bath, sit on the rocks smoking, gazing at the sea, and thinking of you all. Politics I have entirely forgotten; don't read any papers. The 15th has some claims upon me; for propriety's sake I ought to go to Paris, too, since I am in France, so as to congratulate the Emperor, hear his speech, and attend the dinner. But I shall hardly bring myself to the point of traveling over five hundred miles and interrupting the air-and-water cure, which is doing me so much good that I actually hate the thought of the dusty, close air of the royal residence. The Emperor is too reasonable a gentleman to take my absence amiss, and from Berlin I have an honest leave of absence. * * * Farewell, my angel, with dearest love.
Your most faithful v.B.
Hohenmauth, Monday, September 7, '66.
Do you remember, sweetheart, how we passed through here nineteen years ago, on the way from Prague to Vienna? No mirror showed the future then, nor in 1852, when I went over this railway with good Lynar. How strangely romantic are God's ways! We are doing well, in spite of Napoleon; if we are not unmeasured in our claims and do not imagine we have conquered the world, we shall achieve a peace that is worth the trouble. But we are as easily intoxicated as disheartened, and it is my thankless part to pour water into the foaming wine, and to insist that we do not live alone in Europe, but with three other powers which hate and envy us. The Austrians hold position in Moravia, and we are bold enough to announce our headquarters for tomorrow at the point where they are now. Prisoners still keep passing in, and cannon, one hundred and eighty from the 3d to today. If they bring up their southern army, we shall, with God's gracious help, defeat it too; confidence is universal. Our people are ready to embrace one another, every man so deadly in earnest, calm, obedient, orderly, with empty stomach, soaked clothes, wet camp, little sleep, shoe-soles dropping off, kindly to all, no sacking or burning, paying what they can and eating mouldy bread. There must surely be a solid basis of fear of God in the common soldier of our army, or all this could not be. News of our friends is hard to get; we lie miles apart from one another, none knowing where the other is, and nobody to send—that is, men might be had, but no horses. For four days I have had search made for Philip,20 who was slightly wounded by a lance-thrust in the head, as Gerhard21 wrote me, but I can't find out where he is, and we have now come thirty-seven miles farther. The King exposed himself greatly on the 3d and it was well I was present, for all the warnings of others had no effect, and no one would have dared to talk so sharply to him as I allowed myself to do on the last occasion, which gave support to my words, when a knot of ten cuirassiers and fifteen horses of the Sixth Cuirassier Regiment rushed confusedly by us, all in blood, and the shells whizzed around most disagreeably close to the King. He cannot yet forgive me for having blocked for him the pleasure of being hit. "At the spot where I was forced by order of the supreme authority to run away," were his words only yesterday, pointing his finger angrily at me. But I like it better so than if he were excessively cautious. He was full of enthusiasm over his troops, and justly so rapt that he seemed to take no notice of the din and fighting close to him, calm and composed as at the Kreuzberg, and constantly meeting battalions that he must thank with "Good-evening, grenadiers," till we were actually by this trifling brought under fire again. But he has had to hear so much of this that he will stop it for the future, and you may feel quite easy; indeed, I hardly believe there will be another real battle.
When you have of anybody no word whatever, you may assume with confidence that he is alive and well; for if acquaintances are wounded it is always known at latest in twenty-four hours. We have not come across Herwarth and Steinmetz at all, nor has the King. Schreck, too, I have not seen, but I know they are well. Gerhard keeps quietly at the head of his squadron, with his arm in a sling. Farewell—I must to business.
Your faithfullest v.B.
Zwittau, Moravia, July 11, '66.
Dear Heart,—I have no inkstand, all of them being in use; but for the rest
Von Bismarck, the oldest nephew.
Von Thadden, commanding a squadron in the First Dragoon Guards.