9 8 V O L U M E 8 , D O C U M E N T 5 3 3 a
to deposit the cash so that one has some form of pure and clear account of it? Prof.
Hurwitz’s
wife[6]
already told me on various occasions how many losses they’ve al-
ready had from securities and how much of their money they must regard as alto-
gether lost; please do take this into consideration and spare me these worries.
Please reconsider this matter and write me how you conceive it.
I hope that you received Albert’s letter in the
meantime;[7]
if not, please tell me.
With best regards,
Mileva.
Vol. 8, 533a. To Heinrich Zangger
[Berlin, before 8 May
1918][1]
Dear friend Zangger,
Here some scattered remarks on your comments about
probability.[2]
Let’s talk
about it when I come to Zurich, which will be around the 1st of July. I am now very
satisfied with my health. A large part of it is probably due to my lying out on the
balcony very often and letting myself be roasted by the
sun.[3]
A Director Huguenin
from Zurich has arranged that condensed milk be delivered to me through a local
company.[4]
This is probably owing to your supplication. In any case, I thank you
very much. Lately I have been living a loafer’s existence and exerting myself very
little, reading with delight Rousseau’s memoirs and Anatole France, a wonderful,
mild, perceptive
fellow.[5]
On the other hand, I was not able to warm to Balzac.
What ever did I write that you allude to as so terrible and having juridically insulted
Dr.
Zürcher?[6]
The written word certainly is a deceptive means of transmission for
thoughts and feelings, when exact science is not involved, when one isn’t a linguis-
tic expert. But we’ll soon be seeing each other and can talk through everything. I’m
also indescribably eager to see my bosom friend Besso; I just want to avoid his
wife; she was too insolent with me in her
letters.[7]
I truly am not sensitive; but one
doesn’t like to sit on an anthill, even if one is endowed with a resilient behind. The
meeting on probability in Lugano will resemble the building of the Tower of Babel
a little (I’m also reading the Bible); but it may well be amusing. Just please don’t
oblige me to give a sermon
there.[8]
For I can talk only when I really have some-
thing to say, that a general audience does not know yet. But that is not so here. You
will object that one can preach about any old thing so long as one preaches well;
but I am lacking precisely this skill, so my halting speech can only be tolerated
when the novelty of the ideas seems to excuse it. Weyl wrote an ingenious paper in
which he strove to unify gravitation and electromagnetism along the lines of the
general theory of relativity. I consider the thing physically incorrect,
however.[9]