Friday, October 13:
R. dreams that he was about to leave for a journey with Sulzer; then they both realized they had no money or belongings with them but, laughing heartily, decided to have these sent on after them; however, R. turned back to Vreneli, who had in the meantime become a bluestocking and was deep in conversation with a literary historian! He got up once during the night, but he comes to breakfast in cheerful spirits, and when he says, “I am Torquemada, cruel like T.,” I have an opportunity to tell him about Hugo’s curious play. He then tells me about a women’s theater, in which all the roles and the orchestra were filled by women - the exact opposite of Shakespeare’s times.
We then talk again about Gretchen and about Shakespeare’s female characters; when I somewhat obscurely observe that the latter stand in the normal relationship of woman to man, whereas Gretchen absorbs our complete sympathy, R. says, “The motive of Nature’s naivete in conflict with bourgeois society did not exist then.” Telegrams arrive from Barmen! At noon R. and I go to the canal on which S. Michele lies, Fidi rows us nicely, takes us past Zanipolo, where the Colleoni monument always impresses us deeply; then R. and I alone, we stroll through Saint Mark’s Square and see the church in a most curious golden light. Our conversation concerns the King; R. says he cannot blame Gobineau for clinging to this depiction of the downfall of a species and caring nothing for Parsifal; he has no need for Christianity in the pride of annihilation through love.
We then eat ices together in the Cafe Florian and feel at ease and gently calm in each other’s company. “There is always too much humanity between us,” he said yesterday, but he has asked the Gravinas to stay on, so as to have another nice day for an outing to Torcello. As we are returning home, he says it is indeed curious that though one claims that men are intelligent, in legends they are always foolish, Tristan, Siegfried - “it is just that women take the one thing with terrible seriousness.” At supper he reads to us that a group of bandits has been organized to plunder the flooded districts! He also tells us of excesses against the Jews in Pressburg. We play whist, though R. is then much vexed by the children’s departure (in a gondola) to fetch Lulu (from the Schleinitzes). But in the end he suggests a game of lansquenet, which goes very merrily, and in the middle of which the children arrive home.