Thursday, November 20:
R. had a good night, and in the morning he rules his score. Herr Schön’s appeal leads us to read Nietzsche’s “Appeal to the Germans” again; R. does not care for its all-too-Thucydides-like opening, but he shares my admiration for it as a whole, and we resolve to call on Riedel.
At lunch R. talks about his first father-in-law; he starts with a joke, saying both his fathers-in-law were musicians, one of them an army bugler, the other Liszt. He tells us how much he learned from the former and his family about life among the people.
In the evening our conversation touches on the Commune, and R. remarks how petty they were in their actions; if they had ravaged churches and convents, hanged a few Rothschilds, that would have had some effect, but just to pick on the poor Archbishop, as if to say, “We know we’re finished, but at least we’ll settle his hash” - that was abominable.