Visit from friend Feustel concerning the affair of the mason and especially the clause in the contract whereby from the 410th certificate of patronage onward all money coming in must be paid to the royal treasury; the concerts are also included; and money can only be requested for use on decorations and machinery!
. . . Fine winter weather, though very cold. The children on the ice. I write letters to all and sundry. R. comes to me in my little gray room, and when he sees the confusion lying all around, he compares it with Dürer’s Melancholie …
Melencolia 1 (1514)
Albrecht Dürer
In the evening great anxiety—I had allowed the eldest children to go to a gypsy concert with the nursemaid; it begins at 6 o’clock, and I assume it will finish about 9:30; but at 10:30 they are not yet home, and I reproach myself very much for my weakness; R. is also very angry, and we spend a grim evening until the children at last return. One must take care never to give in to weakness, to a craving for enjoyment, not even for one’s children. (Along with this, Schopenhauer’s chapter on apparent deliberateness in the fate of an individual.)