Monday, August 15:
As I prepare lint in the morning with Frl. von Meysenbug, who, along with Olga Herzen, spent the night with us, we talk about Hans; everything she tells me about his position in Florence is highly pleasing. He himself is supposed to have said, “If I ever become a likeable person, I shall have Florence to thank for it.” Fidi slept last night in my room (Frl. Olga had his room); when, in the darkness, I touched the little cradle and heard the breathing of the sleeping child I felt as if I were in a blissful dream!
Today is Napoleon Day; as we are thinking of it and wondering how he will be celebrating it, Count B. arrives with a telegram from his son in Munich: Marshal Bazaine beaten by the Prussians, King Wilhelm himself was in command of the cavalry. A terrifying Last Judgment—what will now become of the French? And Napoleon? Ham, Boulogne, Strassburg, Mexico—must all these not appear to him now to be the core of his fate, and the Emperor’s pomp the worthless, now ridiculous outer shell? . . .
Marie Muchanoff wrote yesterday that my father sobbed throughout the whole of Die Walküre, and she had been unable to watch the scene between Brünnhilde and Siegmund for a third time, so much was she affected by it. Recently, when I spoke hopefully of an emperor of Germany in the near future, R. said he should not call himself emperor, but duke of Germany. Now I see in yesterday’s newspaper that the rector of the University of Berlin, Herr Du Bois-Reymond, has had the same thought, which seemed to us very daring.
In the evening the conversation brings us to Minna, R.’s first wife; some things told me by Frl. Meysenbug brought me face to face with a veritable abyss of meanness. With tears in his eyes R. tells me more about it: “That was the main ingredient of my earlier life and all else linked with it, culminating in a complete fiasco.” I must, he said, have patience with and understanding for him, for I could never imagine the atmosphere in which he had lived. “The first person ever to give me the impression of nobility was your father.” How must such words affect me, whose only feelings for him are of admiration and respect!