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...with the colorful improper use of language. To every man of state that is seen rising, will correspond the loss of an artist. The noble thirst for independence will become extinguished. I confess, what I love is the fight for freedom; but I dont worry about possessing it.

One morning, a logn time ago, I had the clear and precise notion of a new play. Filled with joy I wrote you; but the letter was never sent, because the drunkenness didn't last very long, and, when it passed, what I had written didn't seem that great.

The great contemporary events make up a great part of my thoughts. The old chimerical France is destroyed. The day that the young realist Prussia suffers the same fate, we will be forced to enter a new era. Oh! The ideas that will then race around us! A time will come when that happens! We live off the crumbs that have fallen from the table of last century's Revolution, and that feeding, after so long, has been constantly chewed on. Ideas need new foods and unfoldings. Freedom, equality, fraternity today arent what they were in the times of the deceased guillotine. Politicians insist on not understanding this and that's why I hate them. They want partial revolutions, superficial revolutions, of political order, etc., etc. Nonsense. What matters is the revolution of the human spirit.

On those matters, you will be one of the first to show the way... But before this can happen you must get rid of your fever.

Letter IV

Dresde, February 17, 1871

I don't doubt that my long silence will cause you rage; but I am completely certain that it won't be enough to break the bond that binds us. Someting-