Monday, March 14:
“So they have got him at last,” says R. in the morning, and he reads me the dispatch reporting the assassination of the Tsar. [Newspaper clipping enclosed; see notes.] I am very shocked; but R. ponders with great calm on the forces which have been unleashed here, and he is particularly struck by the fact that a second bomb was thrown. Our poor friend Jouk. is utterly downcast; at lunch we talk a lot about Tsar Alexander, whose limited outlook, combined with good intentions, led to this tragic conclusion.
R. then goes out. He is pleased that the snowdrops have so stoutly defied the cold, and for that reason he does not pick them for me. In the evening we read Cervantes’s El retablo de las maravillas, taking pleasure in its happy inspiration. Otherwise R. continues with the book on India. At lunch he tells us about the Arab horses.
He replies on a postcard to an appeal from an anti-Jewish newspaper and does not wish to have anything to do with this affair, or indeed with the German Reich at all, after its behavior in the vivisection matter. (Page of the Parsifal score sent to Herr Bovet.)