Friday, June 17:
Though R. had quite a good night, he does not feel well. He begins his letter to the King. We drive to the Waldhütte with the three younger children, but the lovely journey seems long to R., and he has feelings of anxiety. Once we are seated at a table in the Waldhütte, he feels better and becomes more cheerful.
The homeward journey begins with a little scene; Loldi tells me the coachman has caught a bird, which he intends to take home in a box. I demand that the bird be set free, R. joins in, argues, and orders its release, whereupon the coachman gives in. We are silent on the homeward journey; all R. says to me, after the children have got out, is: 'Even Gobineau's book I now find distasteful, like everything else to do with history. And I am always on the side of the rebels, now, for instance, the persecuted Bahais.'
We reach home at 9 o'clock. A letter from a man in Duisburg, wanting to link a study of Parsifal to a review of Wolfram's Parzival, irritates R. He says, 'I could just as well have been influenced by my nurse's bedtime story.' He turns to the subject of women's fashion today, and when Lusch replies that at least it obliges women to take short steps when they enter a salon, he becomes very indignant. Talking alone with him afterward, I acknowledge my feelings of melancholy that the children, having been educated for the world outside, cannot adapt themselves entirely to our world. R. regrets having insisted on her seeing their father again. I leave it all in God's hands and wish, wish from the bottom of my soul, that good may triumph.