Saturday, July 30:
Our little company is breaking up; the French people, having learned from R.’s visit to our lawyer that the wedding cannot take place for at least another four or five weeks, are visiting a friend in Avignon and will then return. R. Pohl is looking for a guesthouse. Prof. Nietzsche is going to the Maderaner Valley with his sister.
Our last dinner with the French; at the end of the evening a long conversation between Catulle M[endes] and R. in consequence of a reading by M. Villiers, whose hypocritical trend, bombastic style, and theatrical presentation had made us thoroughly indignant. R. draws their attention to the objectionable nature of their rhetorical poetry. Catulle listens, full of understanding and much affected; we have come really to like him because of his sensitive nature and fine intellect, but his friend is becoming increasingly intolerable. Parting from Catulle and Judith, that good, deeply distressed couple who both possess real beauty of soul.
In the morning I strolled with R. under the linden tree on the lakeside, and once again we felt clearly how much we mean to each other.