Tuesday, November 11:
R. did not have too bad a night, but his revision of his article, the inhalations, the inopportune arrival of the barber - all these things, aggravated by pain, have made him resentful when he comes to lunch, but by the end his spirits are restored, through either his own efforts or the stillness which sympathy brings about; and at last he laughs heartily, telling us of all the little mishaps with which he has had to contend, getting his jacket caught up, losing his velvet cap, the tea boiling over, etc.
Unaware of all this, my mind is taken up almost entirely with the death of Frau Feustel - our best, indeed our only female friend here. When R. asked me about her during the afternoon, I had to tell him of a turn for the worse; he wanted to visit her, and when I tell him that she is unconscious, he replies, “I shall soon restore her to consciousness.” Now she is dead, and with her the soul of our identification with Bayreuth has gone, as well as a truly good and brave being.
R. finishes correcting his article, and in the evening we read the Liebesbriefe to the end; unfortunately we cannot really take to it, and have the feeling that it was written just to fill out a volume.
In conversation before our reading R. quotes the Bible saying: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” He says his first wife often quoted this saying; he admires the translation of the word “Doxa” by “Ruhm” (“glory”) and stresses the beauty of Luther’s work and the wretchedness of modern learned “corrections.”