Thursday, July 21:
R. and I are both very tired and decide to keep to ourselves as much as possible. Since Lulu has a headache I let her read The Arabian Nights (Sindbad) instead of working. Family lunch, then a drive with Judith Mendès, in the evening tea with her and her husband; the others we had put off.
Germany is united, may God bless its arms!
In the afternoon R. said to me, “Since your arrival I have had boundless confidence, a shameless belief in myself; even this most terrible of events, this war, will turn out, according to my belief, to be a blessing for me.” He has been working on his Beethoven and declares that every day he enjoys the happiness of our life more deeply. When he was playing passages from Die Walküre yesterday, he thought of the last time he played it to me, in Biebrich (1862). “Those were sad days,” he cries.
Returning home with Judith, I find R. looking very upset and cannot understand why. After the visitors’ departure I learn that the housekeeper had behaved improperly toward R. Against such rudeness he is defenseless, and he finds it hard to shrug off, for toward the servants he is always inexpressibly kind.