Friday, November 17:
Letter from my father: he is leaving Rome. Two very foolish letters, one from P. Cornelius, the other from a Herr Barth. Grün in Pest, who begs R. to venture into other branches of art, to write a Louis XVI symphony, etc. R. had a bad night, but works all the same. He tells me that, when he could not sleep, Sol and Tellus came back into his mind, and with them genius and love.
After lunch we receive the news that the banker in Frankfurt has not paid out on the money order, so in consequence my money is safe. This is a happy outcome; but the matter with the horse is looking bad; the child is dying, and its people are turning the tragedy to their own advantage, regarding it as “a stroke of luck.”
In the evening Plato; then us, always we ourselves, R. and I, who can never say often enough how much we mean to each other; R. says: “If only I had ever felt a millionth part of such feelings toward another person! But one only needs to discover the genuine thing once to know what the ungenuine, however gifted, meant to one: nothing at all.” “You are Eve and Mary to me.” “A rough genius is watching over you,” meaning Fidi, who is becoming very sturdy.