Monday, June 14:
After a good night R. gets up feeling completely restored. When I greet him at breakfast, he says to me, “All I have is you, for you have spoiled everything else for me.”
He works on his article, and in the afternoon we decide to go out by boat to the English ship. But as we are about to embark, R. feels some drops of rain, declares that everything he undertakes turns out badly, but gaily transforms the whole outing into a streetcar ride to Dreher’s; all 9 of us sit down at a table out in the open, where we are gazed at in wonder by some ladies in a carriage who recognize R. Then a visit to S. Francesco Paolo, which pleases us greatly, except for the row of boxes. In the streetcar R. said to me, “One day I shall travel to Dresden with you in secret to look at the Sistine Madonna.”
We ride home in two carriages and, turning in at the Villa d’Angri, witness a wonderful light effect. In the evening R. reads to us Schopenhauer’s dialogue about death and life after death. Our starting point had been the sinners who fear Hell (Pascal), whereas a character like Goethe knows nothing of such things!