Saturday, November 22:
R. is on his way home, bad weather; I work in the house, clearing up, so as not to have too much to do during the move; I do so with the teachings of Vedanta constantly in my mind; strange how moved I am by this teaching of a Brahma who leaves and returns to himself; I can even understand the division into castes, there is a deep knowledge of the world in it. The only legend which stands above Buddha is that of Christ, since in the latter the action touches the heart: the crib, the supper, the cross; Buddha does not move one, he teaches; Christ teaches by moving us.
R. came home at 3 o’clock; I met him with Fidi. He is glad to be back, says when he saw Munich again and thought, “I once lived here,” he felt like Giordano Bruno among the priests. He was given hope of a favorable decision from the King by Councilor Duflipp, who received him very affectionately. But of the King himself alarming news: every day he has some inspiration, and has hardly been persuaded out of it when he returns to it again. He no longer goes out of doors, takes his midday meal at 7 o’clock, has 60 candles lit in one small room, in which he remains, cannot sleep, taking pills! He would see nobody except his equerry, who conveyed a reprimand to the adjutant, Count Hohenstein, whereupon the latter resigned his post! Worry upon worry. I cannot sleep a wink.
In the evening I read R. a curious account of the festival in Pest: countesses, gypsies, journalists, the Archbishop, and among them my father, always his incomparable self, performance of Christus, purely personal enthusiasm. Afterward had a long talk with R. about the Indians, the relationship of the Sankhya philosophy to the Vedanta, the latter a religion, the first just a philosophy.
While I cannot sleep, R. wakes up suddenly and tells me he has dreamed about me: that I had rebuked Fidi for wanting to give away his meat again, whereupon R. himself had reproached me. “One glance from you,” R. tells me, “teaches one all about the illusory quality of things.”