Wednesday, September 29:
Received Nohl’s biography of R.! Nothing but trivialities. R. writes during the morning to P. Cornelius, I to Prof. Nietzsche about the portrait of Uncle Adolph. Occupied with the children as always.
At lunch, in connection with a frightful murder case, a man has killed a whole family of eight persons, R. speaks of the need for the death penalty. But it must be carried out in an entirely different way, he says, “not with that certain coy elegance.” All the shops in the town should be closed, the public buildings draped in black, the judge in charge should accompany the criminal to the scaffold, the execution be in private; but the world must be reminded that a terrible fate has befallen it when one of its members has to be deprived of his life. People who are against the death penalty have no idea of the state of things, do not know what the world really consists of.
Afternoon in the garden; R. goes for a walk, I practice the quartet. In the evening he brings me a letter from Prof. Nietzsche. The latter sends me a newspaper in which are printed quotations from R.’s correspondence with a “very dear” friend. Who this last is, is not stated, and I cannot guess. But this fresh piece of shamelessness horrifies me.
In the evening I write to Prof. N., asking him to make known by means of an advertisement that R. knows nothing of this piece of impertinence. I say nothing to R. about it. Yesterday when he came home he called me his delight, and said I had no idea how happy he was.