Friday, December 16:
We are depressed about the news from France. Paris is reported to have laid in provisions during the recent fighting, and they claim to have 400,000 men mobilized. One cannot predict how long this slaughter will still go on, and I am beset by worry whether it will turn out as it should, in our favor. What still lies ahead? How will it end? I cannot apply myself to anything today; fear robs me of my breath.
Letter from the Schurés, who are going to Lyon, she to tend the wounded, he probably to fight. Letter from Prof. Nietzsche: a Basel professor asked him whether Wagner’s Beethoven was written against Beethoven! In the evening Richter plays us his music for Die Kapitulation and admits to us that he would find it embarrassing to put his name to it; he declares that the reason Betz does not reply to him is undoubtedly that he thinks Richter needs money and has therefore started to compose! We laugh, and R. says how heavily one has to pay for such ideas; it had cost him a lot, too, to write the thing; but he had done it in order not to get into the habit of giving things up too easily. (Letter to my mother.)