Friday, September 13:
Again the sky overcast for part of the day; but I take the Hussite woman for a drive, and she visits us in the evening. Alas, nothing fits in well with our present life, everything that tears away from our sweet habit of being alone together has a bad effect.
At lunch R. still very gay, relates amusingly how he once sang Deux Grenadiers in Adam Czartoryski’s house and crept away from the astonished gathering of genteel people like a drenched poodle. But this mood does not last long; I had reserved his salon for his own solitary use and took my friends into the lilac salon, but the children and the governess behave tactlessly and disturb him. He, too goodhearted to send them away, suffers very much and at last loses patience. We stay up late, to calm him down with reading, but I in deep concern, feeling I am failing in my duty if I cannot avert such things! Oh, if only they would leave us alone! . . .