Saturday, January 6:
R. slept well; at breakfast the presence of our friend leads the conversation to all kinds of worldly matters, our friend Mimi, etc. Around lunchtime we go out for a walk, but the weather is raw; R. takes me to see a relief which he has discovered on a traghetto, there we take a gondola and return home, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
A very understanding letter from Herr Scaria, advising him to engage Siehr, gives him pleasure. (Yesterday a telegram from Herr Neumann came, announcing that he is sending 10,000 francs.) But at lunch R. is very serious; I think his sympathy for our friend is somewhat exhausted; he is taciturn, and it falls to me to keep the conversation going. In the afternoon and evening he is indisposed. My father's manners and customs offend him; he says he is just like King Lear, his acquaintances the hundred knights, and his arrangements the Learisms [this sentence obliterated in ink by an unknown hand].
This evening we are alone together; we talk first about Gambetta's death, which R. holds to be France's good fortune rather than otherwise, then about the history of the Persians, which reflects R.'s presentiments. Finally — since Eva has started it — he reads parts of [Shakespeare's] All's Well That Ends Well to me.
During the night I hear him say, half-asleep, half-awake, "King Lear, horrible man," but to me, "I care about you, you are the best of all."
(In our evening conversation yesterday the Countess spoke about the performances in Vienna and praised them very highly, particularly Winkelmann, Scaria, and Materna. R. then talks about the subjects of his works, calling Lohengrin the saddest of them all; he also tells us about Luttichau's suggestion that Tannhäuser should be pardoned in Rome and should marry Elisabeth.)