Monday, August 12:
R. had a good night, but he still feels weak and complains of stabbing pains in his heart. He says it is like a clock in which something is blocked up, but the doctors will not allow that there is anything wrong with his heart. Nice weather, and I feel better as the day proceeds. We go for a walk together in the garden; he inspects the new aviary (I tell him that, like Faust, he is in his element creating external things); then we have our “beer session” in the garden, feeling happy and content. “This is what we always wanted,” he says. “From now on I shall only invite people along when we stop appreciating how happy we are.”
The children are with us off and on, climbing, Loldi in particular fearlessly on the beams of the aviary, and in the end they bring me a spider (“at night brings delight”); R. admires the delicacy of its legs. I talk a lot with R. about Opera and Drama; he opens the book and, reading a point in it, recognizes with pleasure the unity of his whole life and work. In the Ducs de Bourgogne he takes great enjoyment in a speech by Louis XI to his generals before a battle; he reads it to me and says, “This fellow was a true Shakespearean character.”
In the evening Bont reads Glagau’s pamphlet to us; my left eye is refusing to function. The description of the various parties is very good, with sharp and witty observation.