Thursday, March 27:
R. was somewhat restless during the night, and our home is not filled with music today. He writes to the King, and over coffee he says to me that there is something artificial about these letters, and he has feelings of shame and injustice toward me when he indulges in such dithyrambs toward another person; his situation and the King’s own letters are to blame for it. I reply that in earlier times I had perhaps been hurt by the feeling that truthfulness was being made to yield to fiction, also hurt by the extravagance of expression, but now all I could do was to suffer and rejoice with him (I do not put it quite like this—much shorter!).
I review in my heart all the things which have ever caused me pain, and the shadows melt in the sunshine of love, which is matched today by real sunshine outside. We all go out, but unfortunately the wind is still very keen, and we soon return home.
R. completes his letter and tells me what he has said in it: that being engaged in completing a work is pleasant, but not its final completion—and people already have enough things to spoil! The enclosed report [not found], from which I tell him only our good friend Lesimple’s deed, gives him great pleasure.
The advertisement I read to him over our afternoon coffee rouses him to send the parson a telegram, asking the price of the cow. Answer: half its value would be sufficient! . . . Now R. is writing. In the evening we begin Carlyle’s essay on Cagliostro, which we find very gripping; R. was so pleased with the introduction that he decided to read it with me.