Friday, February 24:
Springtime gone; nasty foggy morning. Pleased with Bismarck, who has requested the French Alsatians to leave the country within 48 hours.
Gave Loulou a piano lesson, since her teacher is much too lenient. I then go in the afternoon to fetch her from her English lesson, and since she told me to come at five o'clock, R. takes a gigantic walk in order to meet me.
It transpires that Loulou is detained in school to read, behind my back, some musical fairy tales by Elise Polko, and the teacher takes pleasure in mocking the earnestness of my supervision of Loulou. It makes me very sad to see Loulou consenting to such things, and on R.'s advice I stop the lessons.
R. says, "What is the point of all your worries, the pedantry in fact with which you keep all vulgar things away from the children, when all you get from other people is downright mockery?" I ask myself inwardly whether the children will not one day absolutely disown me, whether they will recognize my attitude, my way of doing things. In God's name, I shall bear it all.
Fidi causes us concern; his eye teeth are giving him trouble and he has a temperature.
A Countess Steinbach, 70 years old, has become a Protestant; R. and I discuss when I shall do this.
As we returned yesterday from our walk, R. told me that he had met Stephen Heller, but had not greeted this "exile." During his last visit to Paris the concert promoter Giacomelli remarked how well Stephen H. was behaving, whereupon R. visited him, but at once regretted it, since he realized how much too far he, R., had gone and what a cold and shallow character he was, though perhaps not one of the worst. Since things had now gone badly for him, too, in Paris, Stephen Heller had not repaid his visit.
In this connection R. also tells me how, during his first visit to Paris, a man greeted him, and he was so pleased that someone should recognize and greet him there that he returned the greeting with tremendous cordiality. He then, however, had to rack his brains over who the person could have been; after much exertion he at last realized it had been Mme Viardot's servant, which had "horribly vexed" him.
In the evening, Carlyle; R. says he has a good mind to send him Art and Politics.