Saturday, April 29:
We keep this morning free in order to visit the aquarium; great impression. It turns one into a philosopher; here one comes to realize that man is also nothing but an animal with desires. Here one understands that only renunciation can provide an ending to this terrible hell of existence; the grabbing plants are a horrible sight! We discover the human countenance everywhere; wherever one looks, either stupid placidity or horrible covetousness.
I feel the urge to tell R. here how much I love him, whereas he always, everywhere, and in front of everybody says that I alone knew how to help him, that he is literally submerged in me, that he wants nothing that excludes me.
Breakfasted at home, in the evening with Frau von Schleinitz. R. reads Parsifal to her and Princess Liechtenstein; indescribable emotion. If no single tone of it, no verse ever gets written, this draft is eternal and perhaps the sublimest vision R. has ever beheld.
Eckert calls to take R. to the banquet, during which Councilor Bucher visits me and tells me many interesting things about his stay in Versailles. The most curious thing about it is certainly, as we recently heard from Alwine, that the leading figures in the war were by no means of one mind.
R. returns at about 2 in the morning. According to him the banquet was quite a handsome one; a nice toast was proposed to him by Herr Tappert, whereupon he made a reply in which he described his idea in detail.