Saturday, January 11:
Much with the children, since these are my last days here. To and fro with Dresden, we send telegrams saying yes and then no, since more detailed reports describe it as a very wretched affair. Dr. Pusinelli cables R. that he must come, but R. does not want to.
A walk with the children past the theater to the Bürgerreuth inn. R. joins us at the Bürgerreuth, to our great delight. Unfortunately he has had a letter from Herr Am Rhyn, who has the effrontery to insist upon compensation. Yesterday R. went to inspect our house with Loldi, whom he fetched from school. He says this would be my task - to establish a good school - for we do not care for anything we find here. In consequence of a final letter from Pusinelli, we decide to travel on Monday. With the children a lot, in the evening R. reads “The Battle” by Schiller to them in his splendid way, also “The Diver.” I am glad that the children are receiving such impressions, and I myself am moved to tears by Schiller’s genius, through the instrument of R.’s voice. Of “The Diver” he says: “What is particularly beautiful about it is that it is really a phenomenon of Nature, and the human heart seems hardly to be concerned in it. But what have people made of it, basing operas and dramas on it, turning it into a political conspiracy or a love intrigue! It just shows that nobody has understood Schiller’s delicate art!” He speaks about the 8th volume and says he would like to end it with his poem to the King, were it not that he must reproach himself that it is in part untrue, for I must know very well to whom he owed the fact that the work was written - why else was it not completed in the earlier years? I beg him to include it all the same, for our gratitude to the King must be unconditional. In saying this I search my heart to find out whether it does not perhaps contain a trace of vanity - I hope to goodness not, and that my love is pure and selfless! (Of the King we hear that, in view of his financial difficulties - due to his expenditure - he is thinking of indulging in speculation and is forming a company to assist him to that end; Feustel was invited to take part, but he has declined!) R. has written in my new writing case the inscription O Kosel, o Kosel, mein holdes Getösel! which is meant to suggest that I am for him the movement without which he would be paralyzed.