Last night R. got up again and read the report of the general staff, whose skill in describing things simply he finds very attractive. The men who direct such a war appear to him to be super human, and certainly no excitement can be compared with the heightened mental activity in which a man like Moltke is engaged at such a time. It is like a game, an arithmetical problem, but with what materials one is reckoning—with heroic courage and mortal lives! Nothing else can equal that. —
Discussion over our finances, decide to pay for the children’s board out of my allowance and to leave Hans’s fund untouched. Herr Feustel has warned me that we shall have to tread very carefully before we get things in order, and my small savings have all been used up! —
Schiller’s diary, which R. gave me to read, touches me with its exactitude—I have the feeling that he was expecting death any day and wished to make the situation clear to his wife and children. Magnificent the way he completely ignores all outward successes in it. —
In the afternoon a coffee party at Baroness Bibra’s. On my return home I find that Frau Vitzthum has arrived; she proves a slight disappointment, insofar as we had imagined her to be tall and slim, whereas she is a small soubrette type of person, so not only no Sieglinde, but not even a Valkyrie! —
Friedel gives me quite a shock with a sudden discharge from the ear, which the doctor fortunately considers not to be serious. — Music in the evening, from Die Meistersinger— I think most tenderly of Marie Muchanoff, who always shared so beautifully my feelings about it.
Our evening is much enlivened by the return of our Macedonian, who brings with him a hookah for R., a Turkish rug for me, and Turkish delight for the children. —
Late in the evening R. tells me the news, which he has just received, of his brother’s death; thoughts on the triviality of certain family relationships; his last meeting with his brother so meaningless—