Sunday, June 15:
R. slept well; we breakfast again as an “eagle with two heads,” then each to his own affairs after the blessing has been spoken. R. talks about his article and says it will make me laugh a lot. We are able to have our coffee in the summerhouse, and R. remains there all afternoon in the company of Carlyle, between times strolling with me in the garden.
In the evening a short game of whist, then some movements from the Beethoven symphonies, the first movement of the B-flat, which R. says ought to be played very quickly, it is a Mozart allegro, as distinct from the so much more ordered Allegro of the Eroica. Then the Andante from the C Minor, which Herr Rubinstein, like everyone else, takes too slowly. R. observes that this reflects two worlds side by side, two planets revolving around each other: “Here they are united,” he says at the end.
Return of Siegfried, who has been to Himmelskron with his tutor and two other boys, joyful reunion at 11:30. In the summerhouse today I told R. that, if I had to explain the difference between happiness and unhappiness-though all must suffer on this earth-I would say that the happy ones are those whom necessity leads to a state of blessedness, and the unhappy those whom necessity exposes to misfortune. My necessity led me to him, my struggles against it, caused by good intentions, were my misfortune-everything that prevented me from becoming wholly him, from ceasing to be myself, breathing only through him-these were my sufferings. But there are others for whom the accidents of life provide salvation-they are the unhappy ones! When I ask R.’s pardon for my lack of clarity, he says, “No, no,” and the look he gives me shows that he has been following benevolently the somewhat confused expression of my thoughts.
“Apostles of freedom I always found repellent”-this G[oethe] epigram, which Carlyle quotes as the motto for the 3rd vol. of his The French Revolution, delights us as only a Goethe saying can-his “dare to serve the multitude” quite unique in its way.