Tuesday, November 1:
How horrible that Gambetta should so decry Bazaine and his armies after they had fought and suffered so terribly and yielded only to stern necessity! But our troops—how brilliantly they acquitted themselves in the most trying of circumstances!
R., indignant at the Alsatians, says: “They are incapable of acknowledging the truth, they have been ruined by French education; and everything depends on facing the truth, even if it is unpleasant. What about myself in relation to Schopenhauer’s philosophy—when I was completely Greek, an optimist? But I made the difficult admission, and from this act of resignation emerged ten times stronger.”
R. has given me a gold pen, with which I am now writing. In the afternoon a visit from young Count B. with his mother; he tells us of the panic, so far kept secret, which seized a Bavarian corps at Bitsch and sent them fleeing as far as Germersheim! He also tells us of the Jewish religious service outside Metz (prayer shawls and spiked helmets) and the bad organization of the nursing services. Also, like so many others, he is pessimistic about German unity.
In the evening Goethe’s “Triumph der Empfindsamkeit.” The Prince reminds us of our royal master. The scene with Proserpina, the swallowing of the pomegranate seed, and the consequent immediate descent into Hell—this image, specifically quoted by Schopenhauer, leads me to a contemplation of the world, of life and death, then to the fate of the individual, and I go to bed in tears.