Friday, November 11:
It is reported in the newspaper that posters have been put up on the walls of Paris declaring that a republic has been proclaimed in Munich, R. Wagner’s house stormed, and he himself beaten to death. With what rubbish people try to revive their spirits! R. is writing—though without much pleasure—Die Kapitulation. Bad weather, we do not go out. We discuss many things. For me the passionate side of love has disappeared; for R. it is still alive; when with constant dismay I am made aware of it, R. tells me that it is precisely this which gives him the great and calming assurance that our union is blessed by Nature; from that time onward a new life began for him, and he looked back on his previous life as into a ghostly pit.