Sunday, January 3:
Bright Sunday sky. Eva healthy again. Richard well after a good night. Hoping for a letter from the children in Munich. First subject of conversation at breakfast: Homer! His influence on the artistic and earlier living ideals of my beloved. Daily visit to the children together. Richard to his work, I into the garden with Loldi. The frost pearls seen yesterday in the moss no longer to be found, but pleasure in the glistening, colorful scene. The soul at peace. Nature at peace, a lovely harmony.
By one o’clock the Friend’s essay finished; he reads me the ending, Schumann. The unexpectedly happy and mild mood of this ending. As usual at midday, the Friend takes a walk and I rest, reading Musäus’s “Rothmantel” on my couch. In the evening to the children; Loldi has hit Evchen, but is good and repentant when I reproach her. A cheerful “Good night.”
Supper in my room; conversation about the cavalrymen’s songs of the Thirty Years’ War and the Seven Years’ War; Richard sings me two of them, “Prinz Eugen” and “Die Prager Schlacht.” Then he talks about Bernhard von Weimar and King Gustavus Adolphus; his indignation over present-day attempts to stamp the latter as a Jesuit. A typical feature, which Richard points out to me regarding the Battle of Lützen: Gustavus Adolphus’s troops were not discouraged by his death, as happened with Pappenheim’s death on the imperial side; proof that morality was on the side of the Protestants.
Richard’s delight in Bernhard von Weimar, pleasure in a German revealing himself thus. Magnificent demonstration of the whole Germanic character. He, Richard, seems to me to be the last true German.
The evening crowned with four cantos from the Odyssey, Calypso, Nausicaa, Leucothea. Only distraction during the reading in watching R.’s fine, radiant countenance and delighting in the sound of his voice.
Only shadows over the day: receiving no letter from Munich, the post office was closed in the afternoon, and the fact that the Friend entrusted some little service not to me, but to a servant. He does not yet realize how willingly I would do anything for him, the smallest things as well as the largest.
Tears came into my eyes once, when Loldi quite unexpectedly sang the songs she had learned from Loulou and Boni. Good night, my dear children, soon I shall have you all with me, as I keep you all together in my heart.