Wednesday, August 18:
R. slept very well. In the morning we decide on a meeting with the children, who are still managing splendidly. While I visit the lovely S. Pietro, S. Domenica, and a third church whose name I do not know, also the cattle market, full of splendid white oxen, R. corrects the biography and writes to the children.
When I return home and during lunch he is very irritable; the flies, slight signs of negligence in the service, annoy him extremely. He is upset that the King does not reply to him in connection with the change of theater director, and says the King is probably awaiting his birthday telegram, so that he can ignore that subject entirely. He is upset also by his position in relation to the Society of Patrons. The pages of the biography are hardly encouraging, either. It is all very sad, and I myself cannot tell him my feelings about the works of art I am seeing, since I am so painfully aware that he cannot enjoy them, and that also leaves me with only the most melancholy of feelings.
We part for our afternoon rest, and he comes to my room to ask me to forgive him, oh, dear God! In the evening the same arrangement and a visit to the Helbigs'. R. becomes angry twice, over the indifference revealed in a discussion on the subject of giving Rumania up to the Jews, and over a contemptuous opinion of Garibaldi. Otherwise, however, the lively conversation of this woman, who is so well versed in almost every subject, is quite to his liking; only I must be there too, he says.