Saturday, June 29:
R. dreamed of a reception in Vienna to which his friends had also invited Herr Hanslick; but when the latter approached R., he exclaimed, “I don’t want anything to do with such a miserable fellow as you.” “That’s true,” a voice behind him said, whereupon R. woke up, very tired still. His cure is proving a strain to him, he complains of buzzing in the ears. I am sorry that while taking it he is reading N.’s bad book, although he maintains that this is not affecting him. R. is having a jacket made for himself out of the same material as my negligee, and I am very pleased about it; he asked me whether it would be proper.
The enclosed witticism from my father [not found] gives him much pleasure. “That is priceless,” he says, “one can say of your father that he is free” (alluding to N.) - “imperturbable in the zigzag of his life.” Still referring to the book, whose ending he reads to me in almost lyrical tones, R. says, “To be blind and not to believe in anything inside one - that is bad.” Nice drive to the zoological gardens, a new sight in our pretty countryside.