Friday, August 29:
R. follows the president’s funeral cortege; I hope that we shall not be faced here with a worse. Yesterday R. met the Baron’s very pleasant son and was very shocked by his pitiful appearance; today, too, he makes a great impression on him. R. has difficulty in rescuing something of the morning for his work. I write to Marie Schl. and Olga von Meyendorff.
After luncheon in the garden, the weather cold; R. arrives, followed by three people from Vienna, and I recognize in them the ominous figures from the Wagner Society, unpleasant Jewish impression.
Voltz and Batz have also written, saying that they are still unable to make any payments; all difficult and trying matters. When one sees how in this world a genius, instead of living for his conceptions, has to struggle with the difficulties of realizing them, one understands the doleful meaning of the enigma of life!
In the evening finished The Myth of Thor. Our sole pleasure is Fidi; his sparkling eyes lead us to talk of eyes in general and those of my father in particular, which are so peculiar. “They have a brightness,” says R., “like those of a saint in his grave — something ascetically, fanatically friendly!”