Sunday, June 2:
R. did not have a good night, I beg him not to work, and he decides on an outing. We set off with the children and the Wolzogens for Creussen in serene and happy spirits; the little town pleases us, it looks so pretty when we go for a walk along the highway and look back at it, "just like an old etching." We settle ourselves in a lush meadow, the children pick flowers, and we enjoy each moment as it comes. Fidi's tales of his "thirteen boys" amuse us vastly. While walking with R. along the Creussen highway, I say how pleased I am that the active days are past. "Yes, clumsy old London was a good ending." At the inn, drinking beer and milk, we have to agree with R. that such simple bourgeois pleasures are the best. Pretty homeward journey in the evening sunshine, we are glad to have made the acquaintance of this district; for the first time we have a feeling of being at home, R. and I, "with everyone and everything," he says.
Our gay and peaceful day ends horribly with the news that another attempt has been made on the Emperor's life! [Inserted between the pages is a special edition of the Bayreuther Tagblatt dated June 2, 1878; see notes.] This can be a nail in the Emperor's coffin; it may also cloud his mind, rob him of all spontaneity. And the consequences! R. thinks it must have been a Social Democrat who, enraged by the police measures, wished to show how matters really stand. The state, organized solely for the protection of the propertied classes, and now universal suffrage on top of it.
These assassination attempts seem to me so un-German, as if the whole German nation has become a stranger to itself. With much effort we succeed in diverting our thoughts in other directions, reading some letters from Schopenhauer to Frauenstadt in which, fascinatingly intermingled, one finds a great and kind sympathy, a violent dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of his talent, eagerness to implant his teachings, and a frenzy for truth.