Sunday, June 1:
My hopes did not betray me: R. had a good night. We parted last night with memories of Switzerland; R. recalled a Corpus Christi procession at the foot of the Matterhorn, at its head a clarinet and a drum playing a sort of French march, behind the monstrance a race of cretins, and before it this music! He is reading Carlyle’s The French Revolution with great enjoyment.
Frl. Uhlig has sent a copy of part of his letters, and we read them in the summerhouse in the afternoon. Much delight in them; in a curious way they make one realize to what extent R. has always been the same person; no wonder that for most people he remains incomprehensible. We then go for a walk in the palace gardens, and in the evening I greet R. in Scheherazade; he sings, 'Sei standhaft,' etc., and says with a laugh, 'I am so contented that I am becoming stupid.'
In the evening an attempt to finish reading Carlyle’s first lecture, but R. interrupts, saying that Wotan was a man, a thinker, and the conclusions drawn from that fact are drivel. We proceed to Mohammed, in which there are very good things, about the sincerity of heroes, for example, certainly applicable to R., and that sincerity does not consist merely in speaking the truth in this case or that. R. mentions at lunch that the King is now having novels written for him about the times of Louis XIV and XV; this raises sad thoughts!