Sunday, December 14:
In the evening a dose of chloral, which R. calls the Jewish caustic and which at the beginning of the night from Sunday to Monday gives him the most absurdly horrible dreams - his sister Klara sitting on his neck to make him sink in the water, Frau Wesendonck trying to poison him!
But in the morning he feels better and is able to "circulate" for the first time; over coffee in my gray room, where he and I had lunch, he receives our whole troop of children, all of them back on their feet! Much gaiety and sunshine, all of us together again in the little room! Also in the evening for tea. Talk about the permanent effect of making faces, ghosts; Die Macht der Musik is mentioned, and I read it aloud; it makes a powerful impression on all of us. R. praises the way it is made to sound like a report; there is only one description in it, that of the thunderstorm - Kleist must once have seen a church lit up like that, he says.