Tuesday, February 10:
R. had a very restless night, walked up and down, read Renan; but in the morning he is cheerful, and we spend a nice domestic day together while the children go for a long walk.
We stroll up through the garden, greeted by many things in bloom, and when I say to him at lunch that he seems to me much better, he replies, “Because you were there.”
But his thoughts remain gloomy; though his manner is more cheerful, he exclaimed: “I find it impossible to believe that anything can still become of us Germans. And I should like to remove my children from such a world.” The thought of giving up his son for a war, whether with Russia or France, appalls him. “Outrages have been committed against the people’s feelings; while a poor dying soldier is telling his captain, ‘I die for Germany,’ they are drinking champagne in Versailles, delighted that Bavaria has been brought around; the Devil is leading, and God limping along behind.”
He recalls the fruitless battle at Spichern, the waiting for the Crown Prince at Wörth, for Prince Friedrich Karl at Mars-la-Tour....
Renan’s book provides him with another opportunity to talk about “the most horrible thing in history,” the church, and the victory of Judaism over all else: “I can’t read two lines of Goethe without recognizing the Jewish Jehovah; for him Jesus was a problematical figure, but God was as clear as crystal.” He explains to us how Plato’s Theos paved the way for the Jewish God.