Monday, August 4:
R. slept well... He works and is cheerful, reads Daudet, even things I did not recommend, such as “Le Pape est mort,” and despite various slight domestic vexations, our supper in the garden is merry, as also another walk in the palace gardens; after which we go through La Dame Blanche (the auction), which R. regards as a model of what the French spirit can produce. “In comparison with that we are a nation of drunken artisans,” he says.
R. is pleased with my picture, the bold positioning of the hand, etc. Discussion about my father, his uncongenial life; R. says: “I am a bit odd myself, but I had quite different ideas. The domestic life I have achieved was, of course, dependent on you; I could not have stood it in Zurich - it would have been too stuffy for me; and Paris, where I again got Minna to come, was the last attempt; after that I was wiser: never again! I suppose I, too, tended toward the extraordinary.”