Tuesday, January 3:
R. appeared in my room during the night, asking me whether I loved him; a bad dream had frightened him. In the morning I joke with him about it, and he says that any separation between us had always caused havoc in him, as in his dream, making him firmly convinced that we had come to grief.
And on the many occasions when we had decided to separate, never to see each other again, our hearts had downright laughed at the impossibility of this resolve. This, he says, is what has given him the confidence to let people say what they like, for "what do they know of our sufferings and our love?"
He remarked yesterday that all our fine poets have got very quiet these days, giving us no more hurrahs at the very time we need a few words to give us new heart amid all the great sacrifices and sufferings. Talking about freedom as it is understood today, R. says, "Freedom is the divine right of journalists to do and say whatever they please."
Long letter from Peter Cornelius, many complaints about his tribulations in the school and explanations of what he is and is not. "Everybody is prepared to admit that he has learned nothing, that he knows no Greek, but that he is not a genius, never."
One of our two little finches has died, causing great sorrow; to insure that the cock will not be left in solitary sadness without a hen, I drive into town with Loulou. In the carriage Lusch converses earnestly with me, asks me when I think peace will come, and about the German emperor.
An article by Herr Gervinus brings R. to the subject of conditions in Germany, and its good fortune in still possessing princes: "only these princes should form the Reichstag and, after having found out from assemblies of various corporations what the interests of their own lands are, they should represent those interests there; in that way they would learn to do something again, and the absurdity of the monarchic system would disappear."
Letter to Prof. Nietzsche, who has been instrumental in getting our nephew Fritz Brockhaus called to Basel. My birthday dove, too, has now died! The cold is severe and we are short of coal.
R. corrects his biography, and I tell him that with it we shall be bequeathing Fidi useful capital. R. replies, "If I can assume that my name will remain great in the history of art, then I also believe that the book will arouse interest." In the evening we once again discuss Prof. Nietzsche's thesis, and R. cannot praise it too highly.