Saturday, June 8:
Very nice letter from the mayor, whom I had asked to send me his toast (he had just been about to propose a toast to me at the banquet when R. got up and left with me). I work with the children in the garden; R. had some courtesies to fulfill, letters of thanks, etc.
We talk again about Christus. “Fear of life after death places all such things as the regnum coelorum among the beatitudes. These people have never, either intuitively or consciously, grasped the ideality of time and space, which makes one aware that eternity and truth are always present.”
It sounded very agreeable when Dr. Landgraf said yesterday that he had been in the palace gardens at the crack of dawn and heard innumerable birds singing; it seemed to him that they were singing the chorus from Die Meistersinger: “Wach’ auf!” [“Awake!”]
At noon R. plays me his male chorus for the funeral of Weber; I find it extraordinarily pleasing, it has the Tannhäuser flavor.
The afternoon does not pass harmoniously: first a visit to Dr. Falko (the mental specialist), the Gutzkow room again, etc.; then surprise visit from General Heine, the former stage decorator, a braggart not seen for two and a half years; besides that a letter in the A.A.Z. to R. from Herr W., the nastiness of which completely crushes me; and finally the arrival of the so-called Hugo letter, also bristling with nastiness.
R. has to atone for having recently allowed himself to take notice of the lying report in the A.A.Z.; firm resolve to read no more newspapers. Herr J. Rubinstein announces a visit.