Thursday, December 16:
We get up very late after a restless night. Since the weather is bright, we go, R. and I, for a walk before lunch. He talks with ever-mounting indignation about Schelling’s revelation, and says it is now impossible to communicate with C. Frantz either. The Germans are like that, he says, disposed to reverie and each of them cultivating a bee in his bonnet, which turns him into an imbecile and then makes him spiteful.
R. is somewhat run down, but all the same we go for another walk after lunch and allow ourselves to be rained on in the best of spirits. In the distance R. points out to me a perambulating umbrella; there is no other way of describing the figure. We then watch Marke, and R. explains our delight in his beauty by saying that everything about it is pure Nature; when one touches his coat, it is as if one were plunging directly into Nature.
He works before supper. During the meal the humiliation of von Hülsen, who for 30 years has not behaved well toward R., gives rise to observations on the subject of justice, and R. says: “Every act, good or bad, has its consequences; it is of no account whether the individual lives to see it or not. If he holds out, he will see it” (as R. now with von Hülsen). “There is something sublime about the justice of Fate, for one cannot ascribe it to human beings.”
The other subject of conversation is the adoption of vegetarianism by our friends the Wolzogens; with this R. sees his ideas reflected back to him as in a distorting mirror, a great perception mistakenly converted into a petty practical act.
Perceivers and followers, perhaps the most deeply divided of natures! In the one, everything is great, free, tranquil; in the other, narrow, agitated, restricted; the one exerting its powers for the world, the other just for a sect.
Rub. plays the C-sharp Minor Quartet to us.