Thursday, February 24:
Great excitement in the juvenile world — today is the Fritschi procession! We drive to the Hotel du Lac, have a meal, and from there watch the very pretty procession. I find myself standing beside Archduke Heinrich, who married an actress and now lives in Lucerne in a kind of exile.
In the afternoon R. brings me from the post office a letter from my friend L. Bucher, who assures me that Simson, the lawyer, is an honest man, then a letter from Hans to our lawyer — he intends to go to Berlin at the end of March. It moves me terribly, I can scarcely look at the handwriting. God preserve you, my children, from such emotions!
Last night, when I could not sleep, I watched the moon, which was just rising (3:30). “Star of the silent night!” I cried out to its friendly face, and sank into deep contemplation! The hardest thing, children, is to have brought sorrow on a human being — God save you from that fate!
What the children particularly enjoyed looking at were the stuffed birds. A duck drew R.’s attention, too. “What an expression — Tristan und Isolde, the whole melancholy of life!” In the evening Hermes Odysseus, as a sort of spring god. (The chief dancer at yesterday’s carnival ball is reported to have been the rabbi!)