Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of August 14, 1870

Overview

A walk to the fountain yields pansies and Wagner's intimate definition of their love as the inability to do without one another. Lunch with Countess Bassenheim, Meysenbug, and Herzen naturally turns to the military situation and increasingly terrible reports about French colonial troops. A telegram announcing the occupation of Nancy ends the day with another sign of German advance.

Content

Sunday, August 14:

These pansies R. picked for me on our walk to the fountain, after saying to me, “I have been thinking about our love; how one should describe it I don’t know, but I know that it is a complete inner inability to do without the other.” Toward midday, Countess Bassenheim, Frl. Meysenbug, and Frl. Herzen to lunch. Naturally the conversation revolved around the military situation; details of the atrocious acts of the French soldiers (Algerian Turcos and Zouaves) are becoming increasingly terrible. In the evening a telegram that Nancy has been occupied by our troops.