Monday, June 16:
R. had a good night. I do not know what led us, in the morning, to the play Isidor und Olga, but he says he can remember from his childhood the actors who appeared in it in Dresden (Schirmer, Julius, Paoli), though he did not see it, whereas he has forgotten so many actors in plays he did see. He works on his article, as he says, non multa sed multum [“not many, but much”]; he has got to Homer today.
Glorious weather, a cloudless sky, R. arranges an outing to the Waldhütte, and at five o’clock we all drive out there. With R. alone I walk to the “Wagner spot,” the children go exploring, and suddenly Loldi is with us-she seemed to shoot out of the heather. Much laughter, walked the whole long way back with our child. Drive home around eight o’clock, the children begin of their own accord to sing the “Greeting to the Beloved,” which touches us deeply! “You gave me all this,” R. says, and adds jokingly, “Now I have wife and children enough!” With deep emotion I thank my children in my heart.
[Added two pages later but referred back to this day: “ ‘You are a full thirty years old,’ says R., thinking aloud about the song the children sang, among others, in the carriage. When I ask him what he is thinking of, he says, ‘I was straying far-how good our nation is, after all. The Prussian heart-who invented this expression? The people! Loyalty toward greatness is sometimes more valuable than greatness itself.’ ”]
In the evening R. reads to me the death of L[ouis] XVI in Carlyle. Lovely last farewell to this day in R.’s embrace.