Friday, December 9:
This morning R. had another chest spasm, but he is able to work, and at lunch he is entirely well again. The naively shameless beggar at the doorpost, “our pillar saint,” causes R. to remark that we are doing him harm with our long stay, since he would get more from travelers coming and going. We walk to the English Gardens and there meet Count Tasca, who takes us in his carriage to La Zisa, a remarkable Arab house.
In the evening R. reads to me several pages from Kant’s book on human races, which we find very absorbing; R. said at lunch that Schopenhauer was right to call him the most original of thinkers. Added three pages later, but referred back to this point: “At supper we talked with the children about the history of the ancient world. R. relates that Prof. Weisse once said with an eloquent gesture that the Peloponnesian War had wiped out the flower of Greece, and this had spoiled everything for R. - he had had no feeling at all for the Romans. ‘And, God forgive me for my sins, I was always on the side of genius, of Hannibal against the Romans, even though one must admire the energy with which, for instance, they swiftly built a fleet and with it beat the Carthaginians. Regulus, too, amused me.’ A leading article about Gladstone and the situation in Ireland, which I read aloud, he says merely that he should never “have become prime minister.”