Friday, June 30:
Despite various vexations, despite errors in diet, R. has a good night, which leads him to make many merry jokes. We drive up to the theater, where the transformation scenery for the first act is tried out and things take a turn for the better. Returning home, I go to Jouk.’s to see the portrait of Blandine which he has begun, and there I find Callot’s illustrations for Prinzessin Brambilla, which I take to R.; they give him much pleasure, at the same time bringing the conversation to this subject. From fantasy we move on to magnetism, and this so absorbs us that in the evening we seek to define the nature of daemonism. News of the death of a child provokes from R. the remark, "No, not that - for that I would throw my club at the good Lord’s feet, like Luther." We recall his prayer over Melanchthon when he was dangerously ill - "What must that prayer have been like?" - and then he enlarges upon the Schop. theory of magnetism. In the afternoon we walk in the garden, also in the palace gardens, delight in the swans, the roses, too, gaze in concern at our silver pheasant, now grown weak with age, though we still hope to save it, look after the dogs, and enjoy a few peaceful hours! In the evening R. continues reading Pr. Bra/nb. to me, with much enjoyment in the lively scenes with the actor and Abbate, the tailor, Ciarlatano, though we find the fairy-tale episode wearisome. R. wonders where this ironical treatment of magic derives from: does it stem from Ariosto, and how? But it is repulsive, he says - in The Arabian Nights everything is always full of passion and earnestness. The conversation is a long-drawn-out one, we search everywhere for parallels. At supper R. spoke in high praise of Lucian’s story about the ass, and he says in connection with both this author and Plutarch: "We might as well give up. After 500 years people still spoke and thought like Plato: that is civilization. With us it is all a matter of individuals, we have no civilization."