Saturday, March 20:
R. slept well and is extraordinarily cheerful at breakfast. He talks about his barber Giamelli, a friendly man who always looks as though made of cosmetics, and about the decorator, "emotional and melancholy, with eyes which flash like an animal's when it fails to understand something." Boni's birthday, R. extremely kind; I, elevated and sustained by him, embark with great fervor on this day, whose great event is the resumption of the biography.
Dressed in the Marajah I sit in his little room, to which he has added a skylight, as if in heaven; R. feels everything is too lovely for such a life, but I am blissful at being his right hand again, and as I write, the feeling which has been growing in me for a long time comes to fruition: no achievement can bring us happiness, for what makes us happy demands that we abandon life; but then wise men deprived us of the happiness of death, saying that it is nothing, a constant journey along the same paths of suffering; happiness is inspiration, the inspiration of love or of creation, annihilation, yet at the same time affirmation of the individuality, creator of the universe with all its miseries and joys.
And today I am particularly happy to see Marie Muchanoff exonerated for all time; we laugh heartily over the situation in Bulwer's house: he, in love, distracted, she noticing it, quite willing to be left alone with him to achieve in person the aim which no reading could have effected. At lunch R. is very gay, bubbling over with wit; a Herr Vitari is announced, and R. says, "That will be Herr Evitari." To Jouk. he says, "One cannot make even an opportunity out of you, since you have no forelock to seize." (Herr J. is bald.) Thinking of our common work, he calls me his inciter to heroic deeds, and passing from this to Brünnhilde, he sings, "Wunschmaid warst du mir." Recalling Eva and Loldi's age and approaching confirmation, he is also reminded of our friend Dittmar and our Communion. We drink to it, profoundly moved; whoever was recognized by him and held his own before him remains immortal.
After lunch a pleasant episode with flowers. Baroness Wöhrmann comes to wish Boni many happy returns. Since she talked about Carmen, R. improvises for me a conversation on this subject between her and her husband, who did not say a word. A walk in the garden, a cloudless sky, but it is cold; R. reads some of the Neapolitan stories but soon feels worn out and goes off to rest. Whist in the evening; R. and I together enjoy good luck.
Watching a glorious sunset above Vesuvius: "Beautiful," says R., "but where can I grasp you, Nature without end?" "Grasp me," I say to him, and we put our arms around each other as we stroll. "You are the God that within my breast is owned," he replies to me, and utters a variation of the lines that follow; I cannot write it down exactly.