Wednesday, September 4:
Nice morning. R., after a good night’s sleep, orders the horses, and in splendid weather, after he has done some work in the morning, we drive out to the Waldhütte. I had the feeling that I had never seen R. looking so radiantly well; with him in indescribable high spirits and the children in constant fits of laughter, we reach the woods in the most glorious sunshine; we leave the carriage for a while outside the Waldhütte and, at R.’s instigation, take a path which is delightful but which necessitates some climbing; soon R. is no longer looking so well, he becomes silent, I am beset by feelings of gloom, and in a mood as melancholy as it had earlier been carefree we return home as night begins to fall. The rising moon sparsely illuminates the countryside which had previously seemed to me so cheerful, now so sorrowful!
R. is monosyllabic, but back home he tells me that he suddenly felt the stabbing pains in his chest again and spat up a little blood. Then he remembered that the doctor had advised him against walking uphill. A letter to me from Herr Levi provides material for discussion in the evening. R. speaks of religion as it is regarded by most people: they believe in it as if it were a sort of magic, as if the Pope had the means of getting us to Heaven one way or another. He reads aloud, to our great amusement, a passage in which Louis XI said he did not wish people to pray for the salvation of his soul only for the health of his body.