Jena, Nov. 28th.
Last night I got your letter written on Sunday at Clinches, a place from
which letters do not seem to depart easily. My knowledge of England's
geography is limited, so how could I guess that it was so easy to go up
to London from there for the exam, and back again the same day? As you
had no time, you say, to go to Jermyn Street, I suppose the two letters
I sent there will be forwarded to you. If they are not it does not
matter. They were only a string of little trivial things that would look
really quite too little and trivial to be worth reading in the
magnificence of Clinches. I am glad you are well; glad you are happy;
glad you feel you did not do badly on Saturday. It is a good thing to be
well and happy and satisfied, and a pleasant thing to have found a
friend who takes so much interest in you, and to whom you can tell your
most sacred thoughts: doubly pleasant, of course, when the friend
chances to be a woman, and she is pretty, and young, and rich, and
everything else that is suitable and desirable. The world is an amusing
place. My step-mother talked of you this morning at breakfast. She was,
it seems, in a prophetic mood. She shook her head after the manner of
the more gloomy of the prophets, and hoped you would steer clear of
entanglements.
'And why should he not, _meine Liebste_?' inquired Papa.
'Not for nothing has he got that mouth, Ferdinand,' answered she.