Tuesday, June 15:
R. had a very bad night, tormented by indigestion, and we do not know exactly what can have disagreed with him. But in spite of feeling unwell R. went out of doors in the morning, saw Fidi with the gardener’s boy, and was so delighted with the latter that he decided we should take him with us as Fidi’s Kurwenal.
He spends the day very quietly, does not have lunch with us, merely, when we are drinking coffee on the dining-room terrace, raising his fist to me as a joking sign that he is in good spirits. In the evening he feels sufficiently restored to join us for supper, and when I tell of my visit to the Fioretta and to Mme Mennikoffer, who presides there, and how she told me that to experience sorrow one must be living in luxury, he asks me whether she did not offer me something in her dining room, as if to say, “What are these titbits to me, now that I have lost my husband?”
In the evening we look at a folio belonging to our friend J.; The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Teniers causes us the greatest amusement, the works of Rembrandt the greatest admiration; but about Rubens he protests at length, he finds his women with their “vulgar, indolent sensuality” repulsive, and considers Rubens a perfect pupil of the Jesuits.