Saturday, April 18:
I am again confined to my bed and am now a completely useless member of the family! I ask R. to bring me Woodstock, and he is glad that I wish to read it, saying, “I was thinking only recently that history is only enjoyable in the hands of an artist such as W[alter] Scott; otherwise it is the dreariest, most forbidding thing possible.”
R. has been much distracted from his work today and has decided to write the last page tomorrow. And so it is: the last thing written in the old house is bei des Speeres Spitze, and in connection with this R. remarks that there will never again be those religious states of mind in which every object is held sacred, every deed dedicated to the gods.
From the 19th to the 28th all the exertions of moving, during which I receive a terrible blow with the news of Marie Muchanoff’s mortal illness and awful pain...
Many treasures from the rich contents of mind and heart are now lost to this book forever, since, numbed by the shock and in any case overworked, I only take up my pen again in the new house (the final happiness) on the 29th. But isolated details I can still note down.
R. packs his books away, and we keep out only Shakespeare, the Indian proverbs, and Schopenhauer. The last of these was the only one to which I could listen on the day I received the news that my friend was dying. Then we read Julius Caesar, which always impresses me as the most tragic of all tragedies: from the very beginning all is lost, and the people seem like ghosts; curious how Shakespeare here so closely reflects the impressions of people and things that one received from Plutarch in one’s youth.
Within the last few days R. had a strange dream about Mendelssohn, who did not wish to write something for Schröder-Devrient, since she had not sung at his funeral! Then again and again the old dream about Minna, who was still alive, and R. kept asking himself, “My God, what is going to happen with Cosima? Well, she can’t live forever” and with these words he wakes up.
The last letters I receive in the old house are from my mother and E. O[llivier]; the former cannot send me my 40,000 francs, and the latter will not return my jewelry (left with my sister Blandine)!
At last—