Monday, March 18:
R. had a good night; at breakfast he shows me a hymn written by Prof. Minckwitz in his honor. He works, but at lunch complains of having felt cold, and I cannot describe the concern with which I searched that dear countenance to see whether it showed any traces of indisposition! But Heaven remains merciful to me, he does not become unwell, goes walking in the garden, and continues to work in ink on his penciled sketches in the evening. Friend Wolzogen brings the cheerful news that the Emperor of Brazil has sent 15 marks through his ambassador in Berlin!
The pension the Emperor recently granted Herr J. Schmidt leads us to the little book written against him by Lassalle. Herr Gottschall is being given a title for his services to literature. R. was pleased with the portrait of Leisewitz in the Illustrierte Zeitung, he likes his pigtail: “There is something cultivated, careful about it, it reminds one slightly of the Greeks; we run around like savages, even in our dress suits!”
At supper much merriment over the collapse of our school and the curious people we should have had here for it. Hey and his 13 children - “and he always takes his nurse around with him,” says R.
Began the biography of Schopenhauer, skipping all Gwinner’s comments, but everything by Sch. himself deeply moving. When, as we say good night, I express my great delight that R. is looking so well, he says, “Yes, when I hear people talking about the jubilee of some 60-year-old, I have to laugh over the way I feel - but that is due to you and your love!”
How to express in words my happiness, such blessings?