Saturday, August 20:
A correspondent’s report in the Bund yesterday upset me very much; it said that the Germans were facing guerrilla warfare, and today the A.A.Z. declares that if the Germans do not soon destroy Bazaine and march on Paris as hastily as possible, all their victories will be wasted.
I am still utterly consumed by my anxiety when Countess B. is announced, and she tells me of a victory at Metz, the French cut off from Paris. This is official. May the grace of God now descend on our magnificent German steadfastness, that the prize may be worthy of these dreadful and splendid struggles!
(Letter from Clemens Brockhaus arrives today after all—so you see one must always remain patient, says R.) I write to Mathilde M[aier] and to Judith Mendès; the latter we shall probably not see again. Jakob brings news that all our papers have arrived at the parsonage, but the parson Tschudi is on a short tour, and that is why we have heard nothing from him!
The news of the victory is confirmed; R. drafts a fine poem for the King and copies it out on the title page of the first act of Götterdämmerung, which he is sending the King for his birthday. Today is a good day, but one goes about as if in a dream, all I can see is the battlefield. David Strauss has written an open letter to Renan, in which he explains to him Germany’s entire position in relation to France; apart from a few errors of taste the description is excellent.
A dispatch reports that Napoleon has been abused, not to say maltreated by the Mobile Guard and is being given no support by the army. MacMahon has sent him as a prisoner to Reims!! And this is the nation which wanted to hurl itself on Germany! The way German women prefer to look after the French wounded, in order to make use of their little bit of French, looks very indecorous.
Late in the evening a letter from Judith M., they want to come here after all, which is certainly rather curious. Another poem by Freiligrath; it really is wretched, this versemaking in these terrible days when the heart jumps nervously at every piece of news.
Mazzini has been captured; thus the three figures whom my father most revered are now in unenviable positions: Mazzini in prison, the Pope beset by a thousand fears, and L[ouis] Napoleon—in the gutter, as Dr. Wille prophesied years ago, to my father’s great indignation. “My good spirit,” R. calls me repeatedly during the evening as he thinks tenderly of our approaching marriage.