Sunday, May 29:
A good night. The children drive out to Charlottenburg; I go in the morning to the museum, then with R. to see our friend Kathi Eckert, whom I found the day before yesterday very ill. The poor woman is almost paralyzed, but she stammers out the words, 'Dear master.'
We soon leave her and drive through the Tiergarten, lovely spring breezes and the most painful impression! My poor child again so unsettled here that I have to reproach myself for not having brought her up in a more Christian spirit of resignation. R. tells me sharply not to worry, I withdraw into myself and feel something like bliss in the midst of my pain. Was it the unconscious proximity of death which I felt?
At lunch in the hotel the Count relates that his sister, the Benedictine nun, had inquired about The Artwork of the Future and what it means. R. replies, explaining that the less recognizable the races, the lower humanity has sunk: all the more strongly and clearly must art assert itself.
Lusch, whom I ask for some wine, thinks her father has finished speaking and asks him on my behalf; R. becomes violently annoyed, and violent, too, are my little one's tears, overtired as she is by all the things happening to her. Not exactly well prepared, but with our spirits restored, we go off to Götterdämmerung. Various things again upset R., and when Herr Neumann starts an ovation for him according to his own taste, he rushes away. I notice that he is very agitated, follow him, and prevail upon him to acknowledge the audience for the last time from the box.
Luckily we manage to laugh merrily about it on the homeward journey, for truly there is something disconcerting about this Israeli affair. In laughter and melancholy we go off to bed!