Friday, April 29:
R. had a good night. He looks forward to events with some apprehension, to my father’s letter, etc.: “With us everything always has to be smothered with pepper and salt.” He wants no farewells at the railroad station, because there one is not master of one’s fate, and when I recall earlier times, he says, “There were no railroads for us, just places of execution.”
At noon I receive a letter from Hans, four explosive lines of thanks! At 1 o’clock we depart with Marie Gross. R. is soon in good spirits, and keeps wishing for Jouk. to admire the scenery of Saxony. As we are approaching Leipzig, near Luppa, he talks of an impression from his earliest youth, a man who wanted to pay court to a woman in the mail coach and laid his hand on her knee; the woman repulsed him coyly, and that was one of R.’s first impressions of female coyness. Of whistling, he says that dramatists ought to travel often on the railroad, so as to accustom themselves to failure.
Sad arrival after a cheerful journey. Feustel all alone on the platform! Lusch not even at the hotel!
[Added at the bottom of this page and the following one: “When it gets late and I have written to the children (2 postcards), I fall asleep, and when I awake, I find R. deeply moved, and about me. Once, when I opened my eyes and moved my hands, he placed them together again and then said to me, ‘Go on sleeping, you are so beautiful!’ And thus I feel his blessing on me and feel that it was he who brought about the reunion which has made me so happy. Gentle tears fall from our eyes. How blissful we are in this unblissful life!”]