Friday, September 4:
Still no rain, severe drought. Work with the children, R. on his score. After lunch he tells me in great perturbation about the attached report on a Carlist atrocity, a newspaper clipping reporting the execution of 80 captured customs officials in Flayers near Olot. He would like to send it to Bucher in Varzin, adding the words: “What is the German Emperor for?” All day long he remains upset by this atrocity and wishes the Liberals would call meetings to exert pressure on the governments and put an end to these atrocious deeds. “That would be a matter for the King of Bavaria, to call on the German Emperor in this affair,” he says mournfully!
Went for a walk in the woods with the children.
In the evening R. suggests either Werner’s Mutter or Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis; to start with we read part of Simrock’s preface, but the rubbish about Shakespeare’s morality or lack of morality disgusts me, Luther no less, and unfortunately I find Venus and Adonis incomprehensible. No luck with our reading material! R. laughs at me for being satisfied only with the highest. “What good has Goethe been to the Germans?” an exclamation by Feuerbach which pleases R.