Thursday, October 26:
R. dreamed of Gob., that he was telling many anecdotes, as was his way, then of Herwegh - that he went skating with him.
At breakfast we talk about our deceased friend. R. goes out by himself in the morning and tells of a meeting with a very lovely girl of about 12. I begin writing the piece about G. which R. wants me to do for the Blatter. Over coffee I read to R. a lively letter from Wolz. and a report from Malwida about the performance of the Parsifal Prelude in Paris.
We then meet R. in St. Mark's Square, where he gives me a second notebook. He had gone there with Loldi and told her of Gob.'s death. At the whist table he says to me: 'How silent you can be! It is enough to drive one mad.' And indeed I find talking impossible, and when the children, having been told the news, come to me to talk about it, I have to leave the room.
In my room I pace up and down, then hear that R. is in his, and some time later I find him there, sitting in silence. Our thoughts are without a doubt on the same thing. After a while he wonders where Nietzsche is now - Wolz. told me about his latest book, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. 'The terrible thing is,' he adds, 'that the people who reply to these absurdities also seem to be fools.'
In Saint Mark's Square he drank some black coffee, which did not agree with him, but he, too, is entranced by the moonlit night, and he pointed out to me our garden bathed in its beams. After the whist he suggested a game of lansquenet, but it all ends dismally! At lansquenet Lusch takes a lucky coin from her father and says she will have a bracelet made of all the things he has already given her. 'You will soon be getting other things from me, dear girl,' he replies to her sadly. He also complains of the fact that we cannot be alone: 'Sublime Spirit, thou gav'st me everything - gav'st me Cosima - and we cannot be by ourselves.' He says he never feels the desire to visit anyone, but I do have contacts outside; declares that there is something of my father in me. I tell him that, if now and again I do pay a visit, I do it for the children's sake.
He plays the funeral music from Euryanthe and then the conclusion of the Egmont Overture - in sorrow the soul is perhaps most vulnerable to music, today I feel close to bursting! When I say, 'That is heroic,' he replies, 'Dutch.' It is very characteristic of him to smile at Malw. for being unable, after Parsifal, to appreciate even Beeth. any longer, and to be not at all pleased by it.