Thursday, August 19:
While I am working with the children, a package arrives from Professor Nietzsche: Semper’s lecture on architectural styles. Read it with great interest, spoke about it to R. at lunch, both of us regretting we were no longer in touch with Semper. “When somebody has a bad conscience, there is no meanness one cannot expect from him.” Mention of the two-faced game played by Semper’s son in Munich.
In the evening a telegram from the King: he will, “if possible,” arrange a performance of Lohengrin for his birthday, and he sends greetings to Will and Vorstel. In the evening I read Semper’s pamphlet to R. He is very tired from his copying.
After lunch we discussed the present comprehensive letter from Hans. He feels my father must have advised Hans against a divorce. I am willing to bear anything and to await things in patience as long as Hans is not put in torment, but all the same I ask R., too, to keep silent.