Wednesday, November 6:
R. gets up singing the Idyll and calls out to me, "I have a good wife and am glad to have her!"
Telegrams from my uncle and Standhartner; Dr. Kafka was away on business, he is now writing. R. would like to leave tomorrow, but Herr Feustel feels he should wait till the question is completely cleared up, which annoys R., for he is not setting out on a pleasure trip.
I write to Hans concerning the legal adoption; R. to Niemann, who reported the day before yesterday that Tristan und Isolde had been scheduled in Berlin. R. is refusing his consent, mentioning his Lohengrin proposal; everything is being sent to Marie Schl. R. is vexed by the postponement of his journey.
In the afternoon a letter from a Herr Zimmer, assuring us of his loyalty in the face of a calumny which has just been launched against me and R. by "some knave." God knows what it is, but we take note of it calmly and without bitterness.
The day passes sadly; a look back over the past: "Confusion will persist till death and beyond," says R. "What is most terrible is the world's blindness!" Our mood of sadness is dispelled by Frithiof's Saga, which I was reading in Mohnicke's prose translation, and since it pleased me, I read some passages to R., who was sitting there brooding in silence, to our mutual delight. "Making jokes in moments of danger was something even the Greeks did not know." Comforted and grateful to the fine poets whose smiling helps us over our worries, we went off to bed.
Last night, referring to the projected Tristan in Berlin, he had said to me, "Slowly but inexorably my cause is making headway; it is drawing closer like the Stone Guest." Today he said: "What tremendous will power I need for my enterprise, yet inwardly how finished with life I am!"
The children have their first piano lesson with Herr Kastner.