V.

MADAME,—It is only with great difficulty that I withstand my desire to fill a whole letter with agricultural complaints, about night-frosts, sick cattle, bad rape and bad roads, dead lambs, hungry sheep, scarcity of straw, fodder, money, potatoes, and manure; in addition to that, John outside is, as continually as badly, whistling a wretched Schottische, and I have not the cruelty to forbid him, as music may perhaps soothe his despair in love. The ideal of his dreams, at her parents’ desire, has lately refused him, and married a frame-maker. Just my case, except the frame-maker, who is rasping away in the bosom of the future. I _must_, the Devil take me! get married, I can again see, plainly; since, after my father’s departure, I feel lonely and forsaken, and this mild, damp weather makes me melancholy, and longingly prone to love. I can not help it, in the end I must marry ——; every body will have it so, and nothing seems more natural, as we have both remained behind. She is somewhat cold to me, but that is the way with them all; it is pretty not to be able to change one’s affections like one’s shirt, however seldom the last event may occur. That on the 1st I bore the visit of several ladies with polite urbanity, our father will have informed you. When I came from Angermünde, I was cut off from Kniephof by the floods of the Hampel, and as no one would let me have horses, I was obliged to remain for the night at Naugard, with many merchants and other travellers who also awaited the subsidence of the waters. Afterwards the bridges over the Hampel were carried away, so that Knobelsdorf and I, the Regents of two mighty Circles, were surrounded here on a little patch by the waters, and there was an anarchical interregnum from Schievelbein to Damm. About one o’clock one of my wagons with three casks of spirits was carried away by the flood, and in my little river the Hampel, I pride myself to say, a man driving a pitch-cart was carried away by the flood and drowned.[32] Besides this, several houses in Gollnow fell in, a criminal in the jail hanged himself for being flogged, and my neighbor, the proprietor ——, in ——, shot himself on account of the want of fodder; three widows and an infant mourn in tearless sorrow beside the bloody coffin of the suicide. An eventful time! It is to be expected that several of our acquaintance will quit the scene, as this year, with its bad harvest, low prices, and the long winter, is difficult to be encountered by embarrassed proprietors. To-morrow I expect Bernhard to return, and am glad to be quit of the District business, very agreeable in summer, but very unpleasant during this weather and rain. Then I shall, should Oscar not write otherwise, come to Kröchelndorf and thence to you.

I have nothing new to tell you from hence, except that I am still satisfied with Bellin—the thermometer now at 10 P.M. marks +10° (50° Fahr.). Odin still continues lame of his right fore paw, and enjoys the society of his Rebecca with touching affection all day, and I was obliged to chain her up for domestic misbehavior. Good-night, _m’amie, je t’embrasse_. Thine, etc., etc.,

BISMARCK.

Kniephof, 9th April, 1845.

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