Saturday, February 25:
R. had a good night and is feeling very much better. Telegrams from Herr Neumann about Paris take up his time, but his mind is free enough for him to talk with me about Wilhelm Meister, which I have suggested for evening family reading. He regrets that its noble and humane community emerges with so little clarity, and that one never knows where one is or in which period it all takes place.
He is persistently reading Fathers and Sons, in which he is slightly conscious of routine, but he finds some things in it to praise. At lunch, when in connection with reading we talk about the relationship of young girls to the world, he says in a low, agitated voice, “God, when one sees what society made out of people’s natural urge to approach one another, and with one another to create something beautiful, there is not much one can say about anything else.” Then he mentions Gobineau’s profound remarks about language and how the various races have handled it, and he regrets not being able to be of any use to this outstanding man. Gob.’s reply to his letter shows him that he has stepped right into a puddle.
A visit from Count Basewitz’s family raises the question whether R. should not introduce himself to the Grand Duke’s heir, but R. utterly rejects the idea. We drive out in the direction of Parco and come in splendid weather to the loveliest of localities. When Goethe’s line “When for six stallions I can pay” comes into our minds, R. says, “One always overlooks how terrible that is - when I can pay, then the 24 legs are my own - always property.”
In the evening we chat again; Lusch tells us several things about Rome, but R. feels ill at ease, as usual when the world is being spoken of; Sgambati, whom Lusch praises, is repulsive to him on account of his coldness, and so it is with everything. When he is in bed, he says, “I have you, and otherwise nobody in the whole world; if it were not for you, I should have nothing at all, nothing belongs to me except you.”