Wednesday, December 15:
R. had a good night. At breakfast he tells me that he has been thinking a lot about Richard III and his soliloquy, and how strange it is that he should hold in contempt all those people who amused themselves “to the lascivious pleasing of a lute” after the bloody battles.
Before lunch we go for a walk in good weather on the road to Konnersreuth; but by the end of lunch it has already clouded over; we are amused by encounters in the palace gardens, a solid citizen whom R. points out to me, who presses his nose with a finger clad in black cotton to add more weight to his words. Of an old man in cap and overcoat he says, “There is the Green Knave of the old German playing cards.” The most amusing sight of all is always Marke with what R. describes as his “undulating gait,” still containing traces of the serpent.
At midday we took leave of our still-imperfect manner of reading aloud; R. says he throws the verses out like rogues from some tavern: “Here, you — I know you, and you, too,” etc. In the evening a visit from our friend Feustel, who tells us in the most comical way of the quarrel between Voltz and Batz, which has led to their books now being deposited on neutral ground. The two wives, sisters, could not get along together, neither was willing for her husband to visit the other. And Batz, cut off from his father, is now reconciled with him again, having quarreled with his mother, who is separated from her husband, leaseholder of a prison. Balzac!
Then he talks about the currency changes and says that Germany must avoid taking any further false steps, for it is too poor.