Wednesday, March 12:
R. slept well, and he works. Unfortunately the weather is so rough and stormy that one can feel it even inside the house. News of the wretchedness of the German people and reports of the tariff negotiations fill him with great bitterness, to which he gives vent in the evening in a description of the “frivolous manner” in which Bismarck is dealing with the matter; he wants money, R. says, and so he gives the Reichstag carte blanche, telling them, “Please choose whatever you want to put a tax on, we shall tax even bread and salt if you like, but only a small, a very small tax, so that people don’t notice it.” “And the whole nation is dying off, and we maintain a huge army to defend this dead body.”
I suggest a game, because it hurts me to hear him talking thus: “What can one do but turn away with a shrug of the shoulders, not bother oneself with it any more?” Even the “swan,” which I was wearing today, could not divert him from his sad thoughts, though he gazed at me with pleasure for a while.