Thursday, February 9:
R. had a wild, agitated night in consequence of an error of diet; Fidi was awake until two o'clock, his fever has abated a little, and he is quiet. R. soon cheers up, too; he talks to me about Lusch's friendly and cheerful character; then an article by Herr Hiller about my father's remarks on the Jews brings us to this subject, and R. says it is becoming more and more clear to him what damage they represent, rather than cause: “In a wound on a poor horse or some other animal one at once sees a swarm of flies.”
While I am with Fidi, he reads Le Piccinino and quotes to me with a smile a description of a fountain in the “nuit parfumée” [“fragrant night”] - there really is a great division between us and the French, he said before reading it to me. But he adds that even such reading is useful; it all helps to sharpen one's basic perceptions: G. Sand did not get beyond the hope that a worker, for example, would one day be ennobled, etc. He is looking forward to the book on the Kawi language; he says this period of mankind interests him - history and civilization are concerned only with killing. He intends to study the book when he writes his preface to Stein. “The character of our present society,” he says, “is easily discernible in the fact that it assumes there is no life after death,” and, in connection with the painter in Te P., he recalls the portraits in Henri II costume, the tight jacket, long legs, cap with a feather, and he says, “I find them repulsive.”
He comes down to lunch and says I must now always put the food on his plate - this would also provide a good excuse in the company of strangers for him always to be sitting next to me. Before lunch he calls me to the window to see the lovely light on the Pellegrino, and yesterday, when we went for a walk despite his spasms, he pointed out Monreale to me, so curiously bathed in rays of light softened by the clouds that it looked “like a mirage.”
In the evening Prince Gangi visits us, bringing jelly for Fidi in his own hands, and since the doctor did not seem dissatisfied with his condition when he spoke to R., we remain downstairs, and a conversation develops about all sorts of things: the popular movement in Sicily in which the Prince, like almost all the aristocracy, took part; then about the stock exchange, and R. demonstrates with great clarity that a profit on the stock exchange can rest only on losses suffered by others. Before that he very splendidly explained Gobineau's system to us, saying that it deals not with l'homme [mankind], but with les hommes [people], and he says he has every reason to be harsh.