Sunday, October 23:
Wretched night for R., but he gets up and reads his "Public in Time and Space," is pleased with it, and tells me, when he comes to my room around lunchtime, that he is now writing about male and female in art and religion: "And you are in it, too!"
I consult Dr. Landgraf, who advises that R. should leave here as soon as possible. I book the rooms in Palermo, and R. seems content with the arrangement. He jokes with Jouk about the latter's impending departure and says of him, "Until he frees his sister from her husband." He expresses sorrow at having to leave our nice, comfortable house.
We drive in the rain along the Konnersreuth highway, passing the "Krummstab," the countryside still pretty but the skies dismal. Feustel's speech once again fills all the columns of the newspaper and annoys him by interrupting the serialized novel, In the Grip of the Nihilists! Yesterday he was interested in the news of gold coffins containing richly ornamented corpses, discovered in the Balearic Islands. We go for a short drive, and on our return R. reads a ghost story by Apel, which he finds so entertaining that he tells it to us at supper; at the same time he observes that the tone prevailing in society at that time seems to have vanished completely now.
After supper he plays a game of billiards, while I play little games with the children; then he plays some excerpts from Euryanthe very beautifully, from the first, second, and third acts, with the usual mixture of delight and regret. But at any rate he cannot be accused of making the same mistake: he has given room on the stage to the melody, and not suddenly interrupted the general rejoicing with glee-club music. As an example he cites the finale of Act I of Lohengrin. When we are upstairs in the dressing room, he tells me that he feels exactly as he did in the years of his youth, so that at times it seems to him utterly ridiculous that his hair is gray.