Monday, September 6:
R. slept well and is feeling better. We rest together side by side in the papal bed until eleven o'clock; in the course of our conversation, when I call him "my angel" in my usual way, he says, "There are fallen angels and good angels, but no sick ones." I: "Somebody has to take care of the normal courtesies." He: "You can always find words for your feelings, but I find none for my pleasure in you," and to this he links so much, so many things that cannot be repeated in words, that even now I do not dare think of them myself.
At my request to take good care of himself, he settles down on the day bed (the striped one) and reads the clergyman's collected Fliegende Blätter: "This is my favorite way of communing with the age in which I live, it gives me the best picture of it, and the drawings are excellent." Yesterday a poem by E. Geibel in celebration of Sedan aroused utter disgust, and today a "Germania" in the Illustrirte the same feeling; R. says, "I have only to see a fellow in a winged helmet and I feel sick." And the description of the battle itself produces from him an outburst of indignation: "The dead horses alone are enough! And it all shows the barbaric times in which we live." The Emperor's latest speech to the army, which ends with the words that his final thoughts will always be for the army, evokes from R. the exclamation, "I should have thought for the ballet; a person like that is nothing more than a dim-witted soldier, and that's about all they know!" [Wagner's words obliterated in ink by an unknown hand.]
He wonders how to save Fidi from having to do military service, through naturalization elsewhere? Continual thoughts of America, above all in order to gain independence for himself and particularly for Parsifal, from which he cannot expect much anyway, since he does not wish it to be performed. And since one has so little protection in foreign lands, he says, it would be best if only the piano score were to appear during his lifetime. And perhaps the King would understand that P. is to be performed only in Bayreuth, not on a stage where Flick and Flock would be done the following day. And in that way Bayreuth's position would be safeguarded. But for all this America will be necessary, for he is already in debt to Feustel and has to sign his current account "to your credit."
In the morning we intended to finish the Tieck story, but it was impossible. And yet the subject should not have been uninteresting. R. tells me that he has many times heard people expressing views such as that we owe everything to France; he agrees with me when I say that I can feel nothing but profound pity for Germany's fate, for all its good and great qualities have been exposed to exploitation, and we sorrowfully realize that it would above all have needed good princes, since its outlook has always been loyally monarchical, even up to the present day. "They" (the Germans) "were the only originals in Europe (since the ancient world)." R. is amused by Rothschild's request for an audience with the Emperor in order to explain to him to what extent the Jews in Germany are endangered, and he says with a certain satisfaction, "I have played some part in that." However, he does not see much significance in the movement. The news that Bismarck has now become minister of commerce is greeted only with a shrug of the shoulders, it is just to push through the tariffs, on grain actually imported to avert the threat of starvation. And on top of that, all these factions in the Reichstag! R. counts them all up, no other country has anything like it.
R. is not yet taking his meals with us, but in the afternoon he feels well enough to sit in the garden, and in the evening he has supper with us, and once again we are all together in gay spirits. The children show us their drawings of the cathedral, Fidi will become an architect and Loldi a painter! R. says he will present Bayreuth with a fountain designed by Fidi, but first he will have to earn some money. Delight in our stay here. Much talk about items in the Fl. Blätter; we announce our intention of bringing out a Wahnfried magazine every month, and when in speaking I make a slip of the tongue, instead of "Peitschen-Knall" ["crack of a whip"] I say "Kneitschen-Pall," it is laughingly decided to call the magazine that.
Jokes about my preoccupation with Saint Catherine bring the conversation around to a serious consideration on R.'s part of the nature of a saint; the question was raised (by Jouk.) whether cleanliness was not reconcilable with it. R.: "In fact it is not, for the saint sees himself as a dead person, kept here on earth a little longer through the will of God." He tells the story of Saint Francis and the pigs: "The Pope realized then that he could not be lightly dismissed." I append to that the story of his running after a robber to whom the porter had refused entry, kneeling before him and begging him to enter. And when Jouk. declares that other people, not saints, might also do the same, admit a robber into their house, R. says, "Yes, but not run after him, kneel before him, admit to being worse than he is." He touches on the difference between the saints and Christ, whose life in Galilee he described to me in the morning as "a noble idyll," and he goes on to talk of the impressions which moved Buddha to renunciation, and of the sickness which made Saint Francis see the whole world as if through a veil. The saints were certainly not people of unusually great intelligence, he says, but they had enormously warm hearts. He talks about this with great warmth, interspersing now and again various items from the Fl. Blätter. Thus, after I have finished telling the story of the saint and the robber, he says: "A sentry challenges a passing captain: 'Who goes there?' The captain, deep in thought, gives no reply; the sentry fires and misses: 'Three days' detention for missing me,' cries the captain." We also discuss the utter confusion saints cause when they interfere in worldly matters; and how, according to R., the world has always been getting worse and worse, for in earlier times the brutality had been open and honest, whereas now hypocrisy prevails, particularly in the church (he recalls the principle that it must not shed blood, so it burned people instead), and this is now so great that people are not aware any longer of the true state of things, but believe we are still making progress. R.'s delight in the country here.