Wednesday, February 2:
R. slept well and settles down in the morning to some literary work. At lunch he tells us that he once again fell into a deep, deep sleep, after which he got down to his article, though first he read his Braunes Buch with enjoyment. A letter from Lusch gives us pleasure, but also slightly alarms us with its sharpness of observation and hastiness of judgment.
After lunch we take a walk with R. in the palace gardens. We hear a woodpecker tapping quite loudly, and R. also sees it. He then talks to me about his article. Dr. Landgraf visits us toward evening; a serious court case against young Staff is preoccupying everybody here, also to a certain extent R., who after the visit comes up to my room and says, “I like gloating; in some ways I get a malicious pleasure from seeing people behave badly,” and he shows me an anecdote told in Vienna about the young man, which is really very sad.
In the evening we read Gobineau’s story La Vie de voyage with great interest. R. feels that the Count must be unhappy; his companion, Countess La Tour, seems to him to be insufficiently equipped to make a man happy, for, “A woman who paints!” he exclaims. He also says one cannot love the human race as such; one must begin with the family. And that we are solitary, and the festivals mean a sacrifice for us. R. laughs and says, “But after all a doctor’s certificate can always save one from such rubbish.”