Friday, April 30:
R. had a good night’s rest, and toward noon, while I am still sitting for the picture, he talks in a nobly impetuous way of the impression made on him by Measure for Measure, in which the nobility of convention finds expression as in no other of Shakespeare’s plays. He finds the Duke’s mildness unutterably moving. He promises to read it to me.
When I return from town, I find our friend Liechtenstein with R., both talking happily, but when later his wife also joins us, and in the evening R. feels no desire either to read or to chat, the atmosphere becomes oppressive, and I begin to feel all too deeply how bad it is to become the slaves of circumstance.