Wednesday, October 29:
R. had a somewhat restless night, but not too bad. He tells me merrily that in a speech in Essen Herr v. Puttkamer said with extraordinary naïveté that the Emperor had steeled himself to make the sacrifice and had concluded the alliance with Austria! Also that what was now leading us back to the Liberals was nervousness on the part of the Emperor, who had heard that the synod was discussing the abolition of the changing-of-the-guard parade on Sundays!
Then R. tells me that now, when he lights his Tubin, he finds himself thinking a lot about my mother, since I told him that she, too, used to fumigate her apartment with it; he talks of her relationship with my father and says he can understand why she was unable to tolerate his unfaithfulness. Much about this dismal relationship between two significant people, then jokingly to us: “You will also leave me!”
Gay memories of that daemonic night in January nearly two years ago; the sudden flaring of the flame which told me, as I sought him in concern about his rest, that paper had been burned here, his return to the salon after it had been put out, his surprise over my question whether something had been burning - how pleasant that one can speak gaily of dreadful memories! When I leave him, I find a butterfly on my window, a large tortoise-shell. I go to ask R. whether it would be better for it to stay in my room or to be put outside in spite of the cold. R. goes to my room, the butterfly hops onto his finger, and now it is free! R. says it is like my portiere (and indeed the colors are the same), which has small ones on it; for me it seemed like the free-flying messenger of our loving conversation.
Lovely sunshine tempts us to undertake an outing to the Fantaisie, I walking ahead with the children, R. following in the carriage; nice walk and drive home.
In the evening a visit from a M. de Fourcaud, an editor of the Gaulois, who traveled in vain to Munich to see Tristan und Isolde. R. tries to explain to him why he feels, and could feel, no rancune [resentment] against the French on account of Tannhäuser, and why his works cannot be presented in France, and the French must come to Germany if they want to get to know them. R. plays the Prelude to Parsifal. And when the friendly stranger has departed, we admire his remarkable gifts of expression, the ability to put into words all one is feeling at the moment. His physical appearance, on the other hand, is peculiar - he comes from an old family and is small and inconspicuous in a way one rarely finds among the German nobility. When we were talking about Ollivier’s position, R. said jokingly that Bismarck would send for him to become minister of culture, since he now had need of one!