Monday, December 30:
R. works on his report of our journey. Herr Feustel brings a letter from Baron Loën, who reports that the princes have written, putting off payment in connection with the Bayreuth project. Much weakness and wretched behavior everywhere, the hardest to understand being the Grand Duke of Weimar. Baron Loën is doubtless well intentioned toward us, but he does not dare to show it, and the disposition of his superiors encourages all his bad qualities, such as indolence, weakness, etc.
After lunch, as we are drinking coffee in his study, R.’s gaze falls on the globe: “There one can see what our planet is like: a little bit of earth and this monster of an ocean, against whose murderous inhabitants our armies are nothing but a joke; and on this patch of earth how many parts as monstrous as the ocean itself. How fragile is the thing we call ideality!”
Returning from his afternoon walk, R. sees me with all the children and hails me as “Mater Gloriosa,” “Mater Amorosa.” At Angermann’s in the morning the question of a fellow countryman, “Do you come from here, good friend?” gave him much pleasure.
Joy and concern about Fidi; when to Eva, who was unavailingly looking for somebody, I exclaim, “Well, she won’t have gone to Heaven,” Fidi cries, “Or down to Hell, I think!” R. tells me to avoid speaking much to him; when he sees me, he wants to say something to please me, and that puts a strain on him.
Boni causes me concern with her constant alternation between dissatisfaction and listlessness. Lusch pleased me with remarks about Parsifal and Dietrich von Bern. In the evening read Grimm’s introduction to his grammar and a lot of the grammar itself.