Tuesday, February 22:
R. writes to Herr Jauner, asking whether the performance could not be put off to another time, since conditions are now so bad.
In Germany the losses are said to amount to 1½ billion, and that by the small property owners; the rich bankers only pretend, economize as a precautionary measure, but they have profited from the general misery. Whole branches of industry are lying idle! ... Brandt complained yesterday that one can get nothing in Germany; he needed pink glass for a sunrise, and had to order it from France. “Bismarck,” says R., “has handled the country’s welfare like a student.”
In the evening Don Quixote, the splendid episode of the bark.