Wednesday, March 24:
The days pass in unremitting efforts to retain the services of our manservant, for whose wife and children we also provide, asking only in return the proper respect. On Sunday he so far forgets himself toward R. that he has to be dismissed at once. One of our saddest experiences of the wickedness of human nature: we have provided for, made gifts to, and paid high wages to seven people, and in reward have reaped scorn and insolence! The machinist Brandt was here, a conference regarding the gas supply. The King sends thanks for the proposed performance of the fragments, but says he is not well. R. writes to my father to thank him. Various things kindly sent us - Aeschylus as a Religious Poet and the bishop. Saint Ulrich. In the midst of all the sad servant troubles (we are experiencing disloyalty on all sides) we receive news of the death of R.’s sister Klara; just at that moment I am so busy checking the linen that I scarcely take it in, and R. is also so busy that he does not give way to grief. It is not until the evening, when we are in bed, that he says how talented she was, how miserable her life - of all his relations she had been his favorite.
Maundy Thursday, March 25:
Departure of Elisabeth Nietzsche, who has done me such a great favor. I accompany her to the station. Spent the afternoon writing letters and attending to household affairs; R. is unfortunately unwell, he has a cold, and the organization of the orchestra is causing him trouble. The performance in Munich for the King will not take place; he writes that he is unwell. In the evening we intend to read some more of Gfrorer, but I am too tired.
Good Friday, March 26:
In the morning to Communion with Lusch - her first time! She is very moved, without my having to say much to her. Received a letter from Ritter, who is now working as a shop assistant! We swiftly resolve to take his son into our house and to pay a small pension to his wife (400 marks annually). How dreadful, the way in which whole families can come down so in the world! And through no fault of their own.
R. wants to take me with him to Munich, where he has to see Tristan und Isolde on account of the Vogl couple: “If you are not there, I shall certainly go to sleep.” He tells me how he told my father in all soberness, “She is perfect”!! Yesterday he wrote a wonderful letter to my father. Today I have to write to all sorts of good people who have given us the most touching proofs of their love and interest in our undertaking - a student in St. Petersburg, a schoolmistress in Holland, etc. Spring is approaching, the air is beautiful, but since our return I have left the house only to accompany Elisabeth and to go to church (in the carriage). Peaceful delight in being alive.
R. visits me frequently as I am writing and tells me, among other things, that he would find it impossible to write on any subject from the modern world, since the Renaissance; only in a comedy, in Die Meistersinger, had he been able to do that. In the evening we begin the biography of Bishop Ulrich, but it is not very interestingly written. Letter from Prof. Overbeck, who says that Gfrorer has been converted to Catholicism; R. says that before ’48 the Jesuits had not been so dominant, but since then their rise was understandable, in view of the awful superficiality of the Protestant clergy; all the same, he cannot understand how such a clear-thinking man as Gfrorer could go through such a process.