Wednesday, August 11:
He is; he looks better, and we laugh once more over the incredible place in which we are staying, without a garden, without a view. A cornet-à-pistons sounds, we think of R.’s method, and then I hear the Lucia fantasy! R. has been reading the Causes célèbres for several days now.
Earlier, in the Villa d’Angri, he had read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter with great interest, particularly in the young clergyman. I read it after him; the idea seems to me outstanding, the execution, however, rather amateurish.
Now we are here, and over there the familiar Wahnfried, the enchanted Villa d’Angri. [Added in margin: “I put up with all this (such mountains) for 10 years in Zurich, now I have to land myself in such a h------!”] “It could look as if there were a warrant out for us,” says R., “or as if we could not pay and were waiting here for money.” Much laughter at first, but then increasing depression on R.’s part. We decide to go on to Abetone, to see whether there are rooms to be had there, and when. But during the journey R. is so irritated by the green mountains and the bare ones that, cursing them jokingly, he decides to turn around and go back to Pistoia, where we once again arrive in black night after a drive of nearly 6 hours. (In S[an] M[arcello], R. told me, he had immersed himself in thoughts of Isolde’s apotheosis, but here it is the Good Friday Music.)