Friday, August 27:
Dire dreams of persecutions. R. comes and says he will on no account let me go to my father; these people were capable of throwing me into a convent like Barbara Ubri (!!!).
My father is now going to see Rheingold because he has been officially invited; previously, with Tristan, when we asked him to come and everything still gave grounds for hope, he did not wish to. Children’s day as always: in the morning work, in the afternoon drive with them to Hergiswyl; there fed the goats.
R. suddenly meets his sister Frau Brockhaus; her family was on its way to Lucerne and wanted to visit him. He invites them for lunch tomorrow.
At lunch R. said to me, “The kiss of love and the procreation of a child is a Kalpa”; then, too: “In the newborn child, which does not remain what it was in the mother’s womb, one can clearly perceive the idea; all states of becoming and being are nothing, the idea originating in the mother’s womb is everything.”
As I come to the table, he reads me an Indian proverb: “You can attain the end of the world and the summits of mountains, but the thought of a king has never been attainable, not to a single soul.”
I was reading some dates concerning Frederick the Great in the encyclopedia, and there I learned that, when bidden by his father to renounce the throne, he replied, “At once, if my father tells me I am not his true son.” How great, how true to type!
I am worried; Hermine is silent, Claire is silent, Hans does not write to his daughter, but I bury it all away, so that life here may remain pure and free, my children well, Richard active and content. I will bear my sorrow in silence to the end of my days.