Thursday, July 3:
A very terrible night for R.; hardly is he in bed when congestions begin to torment him, he walks about, and finally my concern gives me no rest, and I go down to him in the salon. He has been reading Herr Glagau’s Des Reiches Not, and he quotes to me Bismarck’s statement, “No decent person writes in my behalf,” which produces peals of laughter from us in the dismal night. Still laughing, we return upstairs; R. goes to sleep but is visited by the wildest dreams. Jewesses crow one after another; think of R.’s remark about the peacock spreading its tail: like royalty, all pomp in front, fear behind.
I at last fall asleep, while R. drinks his water and takes his walk. He returns home, has spoken to the doctor, and during breakfast he is curiously lively. [An addendum based on untranslatable wordplay omitted?] Then, becoming serious, he says to me, “Make-believe starts with the human being; the ability to see truth, and not just the outward appearance, is what makes a god.”
But at lunch he is very worn out and can hardly eat anything, and he feels so unwell all day long that one is at a loss what to do. But despite all misery his genius still shines through; having left the room for a moment, he returns and says to me: “What a splendid stroke of Weber’s, Rezia’s reply to Fatima in Oberon when Fatima says he is found, ‘Found? Where?’ That is superb.” And he plays the glorious passage to me. Whist, then half an hour of chat; at 10 o’clock with dull fear to bed!