Making provisions for my departure tomorrow, R. is complaining about it and making more difficult what is already difficult enough for me! But I cannot give it up, and I now close this book with its account of the fulfillment of a maternal duty.
From September 16, 1873, to October 16, 1874—what misery and suffering does it contain! How little pleasure from the outside world, but in compensation an ever-deepening tranquillity within the confines of our home! Blessings on Richard, blessings on the children, forgiveness for myself—this is what I here beseech. I lost a cherished spirit, it took me a long time to overcome my grief, but I rediscovered my old attitude toward death and life: they are forms which cannot harm us—
Marie is not lost to me! —
Desultorily, indeed always hastily written, this volume will still, I believe, give my Siegfried a picture of our life; what he himself has meant to this life, how the dear countenance of his father always shone as he gazed on him—this I could not always state; but he will find it here unspoken, the love which surrounds him. Farewell, year—I gladly grow older, for with every grey hair a selfish thought is extinguished!