"I am very glad that you will be back so soon, and prefer
to tell you so to-day, because once you are there I shall
never tell you how very glad I shall be to see you. A
few days ago, when I went for a lonely cycle ride along
the Danube, I genuinely missed you. What an overwhelming
atmosphere of loneliness these banks have! I remember
having once felt like that five or six years ago on
a Sunday, when I was in what is technically known as
'jolly company,' and was sitting in the Kloster-neuburger
beer-house in the large garden with its view of the
mountains and the fields. How it ascends from the depths
of the waters, loneliness I mean, which certainly is quite
a different thing to what one usually thinks it is. It is
very far from being the opposite of society. Yet it is
only perhaps when one is with other people that one has a
right to feel lonely. Just take this as an aphoristical
humorously untrue special supplement, or treat it as such
and lay it aside. To come back to my ride along the banks
of the Danube--it was on that same rather sultry evening
that I had all kinds of good ideas, and I hope soon to be
able to tell you a lot of startling news about Aegidius, for
that's the name that the murderous melancholy youth has got
at last, about the deep-thinking impenetrable prince, about
the humorous Duke Heliodorus, the name by which I have the
honour of introducing to you the Princess's betrothed, and
especially about the princess herself, who seems to be a
far more remarkable person than I originally supposed."