Monday, June 12:
“We shall have our house one day,” R. exclaims to me, “and in it we must have our Turkish coffee-table.” Letter from Frau Neumann: the machinist Brandt has not yet been to see her husband, which we find disturbing.
It is a lovely afternoon; after reading me his introduction to the first volume, R. suggests an outing to Stanz, and at about three o’clock we set off with the four girls. Beyond Winkel, a cart with three horses and some drunken peasants runs into us; Grane takes fright, leaps aside onto the meadow, drags us madly across ditches and bogs, until the carriage breaks and he is at last brought to a halt, badly injured, by the coachman. The children are in extreme fear, but R. and I are calm enough to stop their screaming and make them sit still. No mishaps apart from Grane’s injury, though that is severe.
The cantonal magistrate makes a record of it; we continue the long journey on foot, R. heads for Tribschen while I take the children to the confectioner’s. When I return home, R. says, “I see that I love you more than you love me; I stood a long time looking after you, and you did not turn toward me; you are not so much in need of connections as I am.”
He then tells me of the alarm in the household when the carriage was towed home by a cart, and Friedrich, still in a state of shock, found it impossible to say a word. But then Fidi’s look of joy when his father greeted him: “I do not know what to do for happiness,” my One and Only tells me.
The fright strikes me dumb, and I can only thank God in silence. R. says, “Throughout my life it has always been the same with the warnings of Fate: within an inch of an accident, but always coming through unscathed.” In the evening reading, only I am too tired and have to go to bed.