After leaving Berlin we went to the German watering-places. If my short tour in Italy with Arno were left out of account—and of this I had besides only a dreamy recollection—I had never been away from home. To make acquaintance in this way with new places, new people, new ways of life, put me into a most elevated state of mind. The world appeared to me to have become all at once so beautiful, and thrice as interesting. If it had not been for my little Rudolf that I had left behind, I should have pressed Frederick: “Let us travel about like this for years. We will visit the whole of Europe and then the other quarters of the globe. Let us enjoy this wandering life, this unfettered roving to and fro, let us collect the treasures of new impressions and experiences. Anywhere that we come to, however strange may be the people or the country, we shall be sure, in virtue of our companionship, to bring a sufficient portion of home along with us.” What would Frederick have answered to such a proposition? Probably, that a man cannot make it his business to spend his life in a wedding-tour, that his leave only lasted for two months, and many more such reasonable matters.
We visited Baden-Baden, Homburg, and Wiesbaden. Everywhere the same cheerful, elegant way of living; everywhere so many interesting people from all the chief countries of the world. It was in intercourse with these foreigners that I first became aware that Frederick was a perfect master of the French and English languages—a thing which made him rise to a still higher place in my admiration. I was always discovering new qualities in him—gentleness, liveliness, the most quick feeling for everything beautiful. A voyage on the Rhine threw him into raptures, and in the theatre or concert-room, when the artists performed anything peculiarly excellent, his enjoyment shone out of his eyes. This made the Rhine and its castles seem to me doubly romantic; this redoubled my admiration of the performances of celebrated musicians.
These two months passed over only too swiftly. Frederick applied for an extension of his leave, but it was decided against him. It was my first unpleasant moment since my marriage when this official paper arrived, which, in curt style, ordered our return home.
“And men call that freedom!” I cried, throwing the offending document down on the table.
Tilling smiled. “Oh! I never looked on myself as free in the least, my mistress,” he replied.
“If I were your mistress I could find it in my heart to command you to bid adieu to military service, and live only to serve me in the future.”
“On this question we had agreed—”
“Yes, I know. I am obliged to submit; but that proves that you are not my slave; and at bottom I feel that that is right, my dear, proud husband!”
On our return from our tour, we went to a small Moravian city, the fortress of Olmütz, where Frederick’s regiment lay in garrison. There was no opportunity for social intercourse in the neighbourhood, so we two lived in complete retirement, with the exception of the hours given up to duty—he as lieutenant-colonel with his dragoons, I as a mother with my Rudolf. We gave ourselves up to each other only. The necessary ceremonial calls and return calls had been exchanged with the ladies of the regiment; but I could not lend myself to any intimate acquaintance; it did not amuse me in the least to go to afternoon tea parties and hear stories about servant-maids and the gossip of the town, and Frederick held off quite as far from the gambling parties of the colonel and the drinking bouts of the officers. We had something better to do. The world in which we moved, when we sat in the evening by the boiling teakettle, was worlds away from the world of Olmütz society. “Worlds away” often in a literal sense; for some of the favourite excursions of our spirit were directed towards the firmament. For we often read together scientific works and instructed ourselves in the wonders of the formation of the world. In this way we penetrated into the depths of the earth’s centre, and the heights of the heavenly spaces. In this way we explored the secrets of the infinite minuteness revealed by the microscope, and the infinite distances of the telescope; and by how much the wider the universe expanded before our gaze, by so much did the affairs of the Olmütz circle shrink into narrower dimensions. Our readings did not confine themselves to the natural sciences, but embraced many other branches of inquiry and thought. Thus I took up, among other things, my favourite Buckle, for the third time, to make Frederick acquainted with that author, whom he admired quite as much as I did; and, at the same time, we did not neglect the poets or novelists. And so our evening readings together became real feasts of the mind, while the rest of our existence besides was a continual feast of the heart. Every day we became more fond of each other. As passion cooled in its flame, affection increased in its intimacy and respect in its steadfastness. The relations between Frederick and Rudolf were a source of delight to me. The two were the best friends in the world, and to see them playing together was charming. Frederick was, if anything, the more childish of the two. Of course I joined in the game at once, and all the nonsense that we acted and said at these times we hoped the wise and learned men would forgive us, whose works we read when Rudolf had been put to bed. Frederick, it is true, maintained that apart from him he was not very fond of
