Sunday, July 28:
R. had a good night. At breakfast we talked about Italians, Arabs, and the fact that the quality of genius seems to be connected with the highest possible freedom in the limbs of a body; all a great statesman needs to do is to think up ways of stimulating Germany's limbs, making them independent.
The quality of genius is past and gone, R. feels, he is disgusted with "the triviality of the jokes, Bismarck's student jokes as well as the Crown Prince's subaltern ones." He goes off to work, and at lunchtime he comes to me, crying, "Eureka!" What happiness in these words! Since our friends are with us at table, I cannot question him further, but as we part after coffee he says, "I have found it, it is very moving, you will see, I say nothing more."
At lunch friend W. talks of a state of ferment against Israel. R. laughs: "Is our Bayreuther Blatter responsible for that?" In the evening we are rather tired, as always when we are kept from being together. Several times during the day, when we were unable to talk to each other, R. sang to me, "Sostegno e gloria dell'umanita."
Loldi unwell, worry; worry, too, about Boni, but of a different kind. Continual rain.