Friday, February 10:
Fidi had a restless night, and R. has a slight sore throat, having yesterday, after a walk in the garden, sat down in the salon beside Princess Gangi with a bare head. Our dear son is ill, and the nature of his illness cannot be denied - it is typhoid fever! I stay beside him and go now and again to R. In the afternoon, when the boy has quieted down and I go across to R., I find him reading the dialogue which Stein has sent us, dissatisfied with it and with the whole house, complaining about boredom, about bad country houses; very annoyed at having come to live here. Sorrowfully I leave him after begging him to be a little patient. Whether this irritability is the cause of his illness or the result of it I do not know.
When, in the evening, the doctor prescribes a cold compress to counter the fever, R. flies into a rage about the way the doctor wants this compress applied, and he becomes so violent that the doctor afterward asks me to see that he is no longer present during his visits, since he gets so excited about everything. Since Schnap. has spent two nights beside the sickbed, I take over for tonight the continual moistening of the linen; and our boy has a good night, he quiets down, his breathing becomes more regular, and when he opened his eyes once as I was pouring tepid water, he looked at me and softly cried, “How good!”
At half past two R. appears and is beside himself that I have not asked Schnappauf to relieve me; I have to speak to him vigorously and at length to try to convince him that it is better for our child and for everyone else that I stay with him. R. goes off to bed, and at about a quarter to seven, after Siegfried has slept soundly and well, I lie down beside him.
(R. wrote very frankly today to Count Gobineau, among other things exclaiming with Eteocles, “Oh, Zeus, why did you ever create women?”)