Wednesday, April 23:
R. wakes up cheerful after a good night. I do not know how he comes to talk about our death, but he does so in a cheerful and humorous way, saying one can never know what nonsense one might talk at the time—French, he fears—or we shall just sit ourselves down when we are very old, and we shall be gone. R. works, I tidy up with the children.
Around midday a visit from our neighbor Frau V. Staff; R. congratulates her in his sincere and cordial way for having come through the illness of the children (scarlet fever) untouched. He goes for a walk, while I read Wallenstein with the children.
In the evening, which we spend in my room, he reads to me from Carlyle’s essay on W. Scott, and since he grows tired, I take over the reading, and we finish the essay; it seems to me that C. has not paid sufficient attention to Scott’s naive quality, which he just calls healthy; C. has also not quite understood or appreciated the artistic exaltation, which reveals itself in the many buildings and adornments, and the relationship with animals (both characteristics which remind me of R., even though with R. they take quite different forms); but most of his judgment is incomparably excellent. Much discussion about it with R. after studying the novelist’s portrait.