Tuesday, September 6:
“Do you love me?” I call out to R. in the morning, still half in a dream. From his room he answers me: “I have no business, no bisogna, in the world but to love you alone.” Many letters of good wishes. “Congratulations come welling,” R. says. “The earth has reclaimed us.”
The composition of the provisional government in Paris is quite ridiculous, and the first thing they do is to talk and talk and declare that the world is watching them in wonder. In all this it seems to occur to nobody that Germany has freed them from Napoleon!
R. says all this old round of processions to the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries, etc., reminds him of an old aria from Norma, ground out on a barrel organ. I walk with R. to town after having worked with the children in the garden in the morning. In the evening we read Richard II; Shakespeare is the only one who stands the test now.