Friday, August 9:
Yesterday R. had heart palpitations, which then found expression in a dream; he dreamed he was in a coach with me and the children, and Loldi drew his attention to a pond, in which he saw a fettered donkey sinking deeper and deeper until it was floating there dead without R.’s having been able to go to its aid.
Yesterday we remembered with tears our little friends Kos and Fitzo! I dreamed of my father, whose behavior toward me gives me cause for thought.
Herr Diener comes in the afternoon, and R. is greatly pleased with his progress. But what alarms me is R.’s heart palpitations.
Toward noon R. reads me the beginning of his essay on actors; in it he refers ironically to Emil Devrient, and in the evening reads in the newspaper that Devrient has just died.
In the evening our small company, to whom R. related the story of the Kasperl performance in Heidelberg, to our very great amusement.
When we were talking about Hebbel’s Nibelungen yesterday, R. said: “V[ictor] Hugo is the father of all these German plays; even in the most horrible situations people still indulge in polished speech. And how dull are all the gruesome happenings! Shakespeare summons everything to his aid, storm winds, the song of a fool, the sight of a dagger, etc., but here it is all set in front of one so flat and naked.”