Thursday, December 28:
Good letter from my mother. Wrote a lot of letters. Loulou to her father. R. to the town councilors of Baden, Reichenhall, etc. Enjoyed the companionship of our dear nephew, discussed all sorts of things, and always of the same opinion. Nice article in the Mannheimer Zeitung.
In the evening R. reads to Fritz from his pamphlet On Conducting. R. makes us laugh a lot with his remark about how terribly vexed he is by the fact that I am so beautiful and so young, while he already has such gray hair. Then he says that the morning reception in Berlin was the only time he did not feel embarrassed by this, because, in being greeted and cheered by so many people, he felt he was not begrudged his happiness.
Of Bayreuth he says, “You'll see, it will be like the discovery of America, which killed off the Hanse cities—our miserable artistic world will also be brought to a halt.” It occurs to me that I quite forgot to note down the remarkable things R. said to us in Mannheim about the Zauberflöte Overture; this charming work made an indescribable impression, and R. said that its pattern came to him during a sleepless night: the teeming of night, a world of little gnawing creatures, rats and mice, tamed by the flute, dancing to the flute, and in between the appearance of the sun, of day (Sarastro) in all its tender glory.