Monday, September 5:
Congratulatory letters from Dr. Sulzer, Nuitter in Paris, etc. In the morning I drive to the railroad station to greet the Willes once more, then take a copy of Doré’s Bible to the parson. With Countess B. I go to read the dispatches; a republic in Paris! The Emperor in Wilhelmshöhe, the Empress fled to Belgium. How unimportant it all seems! This eternal round of storming City Hall and Tuileries, with not a single word of sense being spoken.
Great vexation in the afternoon—through the negligence of a servant my pretty coat (velvet with fur) has been entirely ruined. My sorrow has nothing to do with the value of the article, but with its significance to me, a present from R. But I restrain my sorrow and vexation and bring myself at last to the point of regarding this accident as a sacrifice, which I willingly make in order to avert suffering of another kind.
The Illustrirte Zeitung prints pictures of French soldiers (taken from life), and from them all the wretchedness and degeneracy of the people stare out at me—indeed all the misery of mankind. In these sensual, bestial, besotted faces one sees complete idiocy. A picture of Alsatian peasants in flight moves me to tears. What madness—they are fleeing from their German brothers!
The mail brought a letter from the lawyer Simson; in answer to my inquiry about my liabilities, he says that Herr von B[ülow] has decided to bear all the costs of the suit. This distresses me, but there is nothing I can do about it.
My union with R. is like a palingenesis, a reincarnation which brings me nearer to perfection, a deliverance from a previous erring existence; yet I feel, and tell him, that it is only in death that we shall be united completely, freed from the barriers of individuality. When I try to tell him how much I love him, I feel the complete impotence of existence, and know that only in our last living embrace will I be able to tell him! That is why I always start to weep when I try to come close to him and tell him how my soul worships him.
Before going to bed he once more asks me not to spend so much time bringing up the children. He says, “No mother brings up her children alone.” “Yet I believe my children will be grateful to me for having been so much to them.” “You were also not brought up by your mother.” “I might have turned out better if I had had a mother to care for me.” He does not like to hear me say that and becomes angry. We part between tears and smiles.