Monday, March 23:
All kinds of letters to write - to the Italians about Kieniii, the legal matters, things for the house - all kinds. R. is good enough to sign them. He also decides to buy up the letters. Reflections on a legal system which never hinders a wicked deed, but punishes it only after it has perhaps caused damage. How many similar offers can now be made to us?
In Parliament they are quarrelling about the defense bill; it is not enough that a man like Moltke speaks in favor of it; all the other gentlemen insist on having their say. “By permitting a general franchise Bismarck has given the German Reich the weakness of Napoleon,” R. says, “he has given it the character of a usurpation, something illegitimate.”
After lunch he quotes to me that fine saying of Luther’s in his Table Talk - that everything comes about through ignorance, and if he had known what the Pope and his retinue were like, he would not have hoped to influence them, and consequently would never have bestirred himself. Conversed in the evening, though there is indeed little enough that is pleasurable to chat about. Early to bed.