Received at the Royal and Imperial
Quartermaster General’s Staff Division
of the 2d Army
Verona, October 29, 1856
Benedek, FML.
Despite remodeled cannon, despite the installation of the _k. k.
Generalquartiermeisterstabsabteilung der 2. Armee_ in Verona, three
years later this same Verona was to be Austrian no longer, and what
befell this same Benedek ten years later on Bohemian battlefields we
know. Confidence in the necessity and utility of remodeling cannon—just
now it is howitzers—remains unshaken in military circles.
Elvira and I, of course, felt the due reverential respect for these
signatures of generals, and for the complicated technical expressions
and complicated arrangements which meant our country’s fame and safety.
The following page too filled us with respect—the loyal deference which
is paid to the wearers of crowns. Be it known that Elvira, when she was
writing to all the European poets she could think of (I believe she was
one of the first specimens of that species which has since then so
greatly increased, the youthful autograph hyena), had among the rest
sent a letter in verse to King Ludwig I of Bavaria, asking him for a
line. By return mail came the answer, which is fastened into the album
with pink ribbon:
_Ihr, welche Worte wünscht von meinen Händen_
To her who wishes from my hand a word,
The poetess, although unknown to me,
Right gladly now these lines I will accord;
Inhabitants of the same land are we.[9]
Though we each other’s living voice ne’er heard,
Poet in poet must a cousin see.
To those who to the spheres have learned to soar
The earth gives satisfaction nevermore.
Ludwig
Next follows a leaf with a relic of a genuine king of Poetryland. It is
a bit of lilac silk accompanied with the following statement from
Schiller’s daughter: