Tuesday, May 27:
R. had a good night. He also enjoys the summer house in the morning, reads there while I am putting away the winter things and arranging the salon downstairs. R. comes to me and says: “In music, melody is everything - it is what line is in architecture. I think I have already expressed this idea somewhere.” I think it was in The Artwork of the Future, in Beethoven. Toward evening he played something and said, “Line - that is what distinguishes the human being from Nature.”
Many memories of the children’s dance; he says that when Columbine (Lusch) appeared he thought to himself, “Ah, now things will start to happen!” Then delight in our furnishing arrangements - the carpets, the bathroom, the ceiling - everything pleases him. He writes to friend Lenbach and to Gedon and then gives orders for a drive in spite of the rather threatening skies; much driving hither and thither as we chase the patches of blue, all very gay.
In the evening a short game of whist with the two girls, then a part of the section on Cromwell in Heroes and Hero-Worship - and Napoleon to finish off with! The fact that in St. Helena Napoleon could not understand how the world could continue without him amuses R. greatly. In connection with our studies of England R. said to me recently, “One day an industrialist will have to come to the rescue, someone who has got rich through work and now begins to think of his workers, looking to the future, not just the present.”