Tuesday, August 16:
R. was up part of the night; he feels very unwell and is deeply depressed by the horrible weather. But he works, eats with us, and even attends Stein's talk. The last, however, only with some effort; then he takes to his bed, very exhausted and at the same time agitated.
We spend a while together. I tell him I should also like to go to bed, and as we lie there, we think of Egill and his daughter, who wanted to die yet did not. We get up, laughing; R. has his tea alone in the salon and sends to our table a word of praise for Stein for his talk. We then gather around him, and from Gobineau he reads aloud the parts of the chapter he intends to quote, in the fourth volume, where "L'homme est l'animal méchant par excellence" ["the most vicious animal of all is Man"] occurs. The doctor comes, prescribes pills, and at 10 o'clock we go off to bed.
Wandering around my room, R. finds a volume of Goethe's poems and reads "The Metamorphosis of the Animals," which he finds rather bad, in both form and content.