Friday, August 6:
No complications, but the most dismal of spirits! Since the heat rash gets no better, resolve to leave. The children are staying here; we pack our things. Curious feelings about Naples, though it is still nice, I, too, feel as if all this splendor were poisoned.
As for books, R. has been reading short stories by the American Hawthorne, with much enjoyment. I read parts of Goethe’s Italian Journey to him, but he soon became irritated by all its “wafflings about art.”
During the six days of his illness, particularly at the beginning, R. had many wild dreams.
He finds all the medical treatments repulsive, “All doctors are vivisectors”; we decide on Gräfenberg.
Our complete isolation, our life together which was for me so utterly dear, yet at the same time so utterly sad, earns me the name of his “beloved saint.” His bed by day was in the salon, so this brightest of places also a sickroom. On Wednesday the bed was removed.
Two things I remember about the day before his illness: that he said it had all happened 15 years too late, and that, when I was about to leave him talking to Lusch in the dining room, a bat flew in and circled around, causing me to exclaim, “It is bringing me misfortune.”