Thursday, June 3:
Rose sadly, too, and feeling unwell. Wrote to the King and begged him to cancel Tristan. R. comes to my bed and asks me whether I will live or perish; he would follow me, that I must surely know. I get up and pull myself together; God helps when the need is greatest, as the proverb says. Letters from Claire to me and Math[ilde] to R.
[Continued from here in R. W.'s handwriting.] Oppressed feeling of weakness. R. tries in vain to occupy himself with his work. We sat in the garden while the children ate their meal there; R. had sent Loldi to fetch me. He complained about the constraints of his artistic calling, having, by obeying them, to leave his moral inclinations undeveloped: he could do nothing else, otherwise everything would turn out badly; to be a thoroughly moral person demanded complete self-sacrifice. I kept silent.
Wretched lunch through Lulu's presence, but gradually a cheerful mood. Then garden again. R. reads out Wolfram's poem about the birth of Parzifal. Great beauty; much affected. Worked with Lulu. R. into town; after putting the children to bed, I go to meet him on his return.
At supper I felt sick; I withdrew to the upper floor, to go to the nursemaid. R., who saw in the exertion this put on me a reproach against himself for having, through the renewed and so much delayed rearrangement of the household, put considerable obstacles in my way, lost his head completely and gave way to excessive expressions of his concern. He complained that I continually and, as it seemed to him, with many excuses persisted in ignoring his daily appeals and representations to take possession of the apartment which had at last been put in order for me again, and to make it comfortable for myself. He said this gave him sad feelings of uneasiness, which constantly assailed him and tormented him like the fear of death.
I at last won enough control over his ravings to make him listen to me when I explained to him that the reason for my hesitation in moving down to the apartment designed for me was that the proximity of his bedroom to mine, though indeed previously agreed on between us, was embarrassing to me now that the elder children were there. Since this bedroom of his was, as had also already been agreed, in the vicinity of the impending confinement and was to be prepared for the required nurse, I had to admit that I should prefer not to move down until the time for this arrangement arrived.
This explanation seemed to surprise R. greatly and to arouse real bitterness in him. He said I should have told him this frankly a long time ago, since in this respect he had been misled concerning my views and my wishes. He became very quiet but, I believe, no less distressed. We parted very sadly.