Thursday, June 17:
R. had fears about me during the night and came up at two o’clock; but I was sound asleep. Siegfried continues well and Eva, too; of the children on the Seelisberg I likewise have good news. The Godhead is treating me graciously and kindly; it is only the world which is inimical to me.
Thus I cannot have Siegfried christened here; this would cause all sorts of difficulties, the Protestant clergyman told Vreneli when we sent her to ask. So we must consider in patience what to do.
Today downstairs for the first time and in the garden, with R. to the pigeon house. Smiling reception everywhere! R. asked jokingly in the morning what more Siegfried had in store for him, now that he had already dislodged him from his bedroom...
There are lovely flowers in my sitting room, I see nothing but good all around me, yet worry lodges in my heart; I hope, dear children all, that things will be easier for you than for your mother. Surely there will never again be such a poor, bereft being as Hans. He feels so miserable in my absence, and yet I could never make him happy, never even please him.
In the evening we discussed, R. and I, the oddly mysterious nature of our alliance. How timid and at the same time rapturous our first approaches, how unpremeditated our first union, how constantly our unspoken thoughts were centered only on renunciation, and how circumstances and people forced us to recognize that our love alone was genuine and that we were utterly indispensable to each other!
“The spirit of the universe desired me to have a son by you, and so it arranged things; we ourselves were forced to obey, without understanding why.”
In the evening I feel very, very tired and worn out. Not even Don Quixote restores us in its usual way; the sentimental episodes are too conventional.