Sunday, March 23:
“For all guilt is avenged on earth.” With these words R. comes to me from his bath; a curious experience is responsible for this quotation. Yesterday our friends Gross and Feustel held a soirée, and it seemed that an invitation to Lusch could not be refused without giving offense; since there was no mention of dancing, I arranged for her to drive there with Frau Feustel and to spend the night at her house.
Since R. did not think this proper, he first declared that he himself would go, then in the end I did. We sent Lusch off with Frau F. at 8, and I promised to be there at 10:30; but as the moment of separation approached, R. became more and more disgruntled, and his vexation fastened on the child: he said she did not belong here. I believe that in earlier days I should have been deeply offended and utterly cast down, but the god of love permitted me to discern only R.’s distress over the fact that on the heights on which we dwell we can still be reached now and again by the common herd. I was very sad, but before my departure I was able to embrace him with a pure heart, and when, at one o’clock, I find him waiting for me, reading, he has calmed down completely.
But he did not have a good night, he does not do much work, and he complains of pressure on his chest; he says it is as if something were constantly possessing him. R. relates to me the biography of the Zulu King, the killing of the cows when his mother died, so that the animals might know what it means to lose a mother, and he ends with the words: “No animal is as cruel as a human being, it is only the human being who takes pleasure in tormenting; the cat playing with a mouse does not know what this means to the mouse, but a human being does know.” He also talks about the military organization of the Zulus and says one can almost find in them the raw beginnings of the Lycurgian constitution.
Snow flurries, but R. goes out anyway (though only into the garden). In the evening a visit from our friend Feustel, questions concerning the tariffs and a good answer, to the effect that the extreme need of the German people demands such measures at this moment. After that a six-part fugue and the “Chromatic Fantasy” by Bach, kindly played by Herr Rub. at my request. Great delight in it; R. says Bach still belongs to the Reformation, to Luther, rounding that period off; then came something quite different, which could be equated with Goethe and Schiller, etc.