Tuesday, June 24:
Midsummer’s Day! Nice letter from the King to R., and a nice letter from R. to Bismarck, sending him the new pamphlet. I sort out papers and hand over to R. his contract with Flaxland, so that he can take steps against Fürstner.
When I tell R. of Saint Paul’s sermon in Athens, he says: “For me the central point of his teaching is, ‘So far you have only become familiar with the milk of my teaching, now you shall get to know its blood’—his example, death.”
In the afternoon, to a sitting in the new house; the bust seems to be turning out quite reasonably. Disagreeable letter from Herr Beta, who says that his articles have put the existence of the paper, which was very successful, in danger, and he asks R. to let him have 20,000 thalers! Concern over Loldi. Delight in the blackbirds, which sing wonderfully here and outside our house.
We start on Hesekiel’s biography of Bismarck and are truly appalled by the shallowness of the modern manner (bad and modern is becoming our motto). R. is putting his Kapitulation in the 9th volume, with a foreword which he reads to me. He had no manuscripts of it, and that is why he decided to publish this work, which he has so far preferred to keep for ourselves. He says he must always be doing things of which I cannot entirely approve, yet, when it has happened, I never reproach him, which shows that I am better than he is. He reminds me in this connection of the publication of the Jewish pamphlet.
In France there is now a wave of pilgrimages!