Friday, January 9:
A good night for both patients. At breakfast, when we mention Goethe’s remark about the absolution which one should administer daily both to oneself and to others, R. says: “That is the only true religion, and I should like to know how anybody could ever do without it, without communing with himself and asking himself truthfully whether he has harmed another person. These days people go off to bed and pat their stomachs when they have ruined someone. But what I can well do without is the priest with his ruff and his bands. The Buddhists atone by making public confession.”
R. continues reading the book on vegetarianism and is pleased with Gleizès’s “charming and elegiac” appearance; he orders the book and says it fits in excellently with his present project.
I take a long walk with the children, since R. and Evchen are both well on the road to recovery. R. has a serious talk with our friend Gersdorff and tries to extricate him from his confused and unhappy position by pointing out to him the only two ways open to him, that “either-or” confrontation from which everybody flinches, apart from himself.
Cheerful meal and quiet, harmonious evening after I have told R. all the things we experienced and met (a camel, monkeys, donkeys) on the heavenly path to the Gulf of Baia.