DOC.
5
JANUARY
1903 7
5.
To
Michele
Besso
Bern.
Thursday [22?
January
1903][1]
Dear
Michele,[2]
Thank
you
so
much for
your
letter.
Well,
now
I
am a
married
man[3]
and
am living
a very
pleasant,
cozy
life with
my
wife. She
takes
excellent
care
of
everything,
cooks
well,
and
is
always
cheerful. I
am very
curious about
the note
about
your
work,
and
pleased
with
the
gentle
flattery
that
you
have
joined
with
it. (The
day
before
yesterday)
Monday,
after
many
revisions
and corrections, I
finally
sent
off
my paper.[4]
But
now
the
paper is perfectly
clear
and
simple,
so
that
I
am
quite
satisfied with it.
The
concepts
of
temperature
and
entropy
follow from
the
assumption
of the
energy
principle
and
the
atomistic
theory,
and
so
does also
the
second law in its most
general form, namely
the
impossibility
of
a
perpetuum
mobile
of
the second
kind,
if
one uses
the
hypothesis
that
state
distributions of
iso.
systems
never
evolve into
more
improbable
ones.
Last week
Miza[5]
had
the
flu,
and
now
I have
it.
Today
I
could not
possibly go
to
the
office;
now
I
feel
better,
so
that
I'll
probably
be
at
my
post
again
tomorrow.
But
now
let
me
turn to
a
rather
amusing
business.
Have
you
by
any
chance noticed
that
my
sister
never
has
any money
despite
her handsome
salary,[6]
and do
you
know
why
that's
so?
The
story
is
as
follows.
The former
bookkeeper
of
my
late father
knew how
to
convince
the
good
maiden that
it
is
her moral
duty
to
give
him
a
large
part
of her
salary,
even
though
the
man
had
already
received his
rightful
due.[7]
He
probably
wrung
a
promise
from her
in
a
weak moment, and she
now
feels
bound
by
it. Such
romanticism
is
very
nice
but
terribly impractical.
It would
be better
if she
used her
money
to
buy
all kinds
of
nice
trinkets
or
whatever
makes
young girls happy,
since
we
are young
only
once.
So
I
simply
ask
you
not to
give
her the
money
if she sticks to
her
decision.
Deep
down in
her
heart,
in
the innermost
recesses
of
her
unconscious,
she will
probably
welcome such
a
constraint
even
if she
puts
up
some
resistance.
I
didn't
know
about the
whole
thing
until
today,
when Mama mentioned
it
quite
by
chance,
to
my
great
amusement. I have
already
caught
this
man
in several
lies,
and
am sure
that
he
spared
no
effort
to
throw
dust
in
Maya's eyes.
He
tried
the
same thing
with
me,
without
saying
a
word
about
Maya.
But the whole
thing
is
very funny,
and has
amused
me
greatly, may
God
forgive me,
it's
just
that
I
am
rather level-headed and
tough.
So
you'll
put
an
end
to this
business,
won't
you,
even
if she
grumbles a
little.
I have
recently
decided
to join
the
ranks of
Privatdozenten, assuming,
of
course,
that
I
can
carry
through
with
it.
On the
other
hand,
I
will
not
go
for
a
doctorate,
because
it would be
of
little
help to
me,
and the whole
comedy
has
become
boring.[8]
In the