Saturday, March 14:
In good spirits we discussed at breakfast what we had read yesterday. Then, as we are both about to begin our daily tasks, we receive from the bookseller Giessel the news that 19 letters written by Richard and his wife between the years 1860 and 1867 are being advertised for sale in the Reichsanzeiger, with the comment that they are highly interesting! What can this mean?
I suspect Malwina Schnorr, who, probably egged on by Munich, has chosen precisely this time to publicize these things—she was an intimate friend of ours. This, God knows, will certainly put an end to our being granted credit! R. turns to the lawyers for help, but there seems little hope of taking any effective steps, and there is nothing for it but to put up with this new piece of malice. Paid some calls. Back home looked through R.’s letters to his first wife to see whether any had perhaps been stolen. Got a sad impression from this glance into R.’s troubled past.
On top of this an alarming letter in the evening from Herr Feustel, who sees huge financial difficulties piling up on our undertaking; and I have to perform an act of judgment on my nursemaid and dismiss her at once from the house, which upsets me terribly; punishing wickedness weighs more heavily on my heart than experiencing it.
In the evening R. reads me a long letter from him to his first wife; dismal to see how he strove in vain to bring this low-minded woman into a nobler frame of mind; in the margin of his letter, which from this point of view is truly sublime, she has written in her distress: Schopenhauer lügt. Shabby and crude!! In the evening a melancholy prayer—who would not grow weary on this hard path?