Saturday, June 15:
The whole morning lost! Herr Batz here from 9 until one o’clock; I could weep for grief! When, oh, when the peace to work in? I should like to take a vow, if that would help procure it!
R. told me yesterday that Pastor Sydom was attacked by the whole consistorial council because he said Christ was a divinely appointed mortal. “The old Jewish God always ruins the whole thing,” R. observes. “What one can clearly see is that religion is dying: it only keeps going by making fools of the people. The Liberals also do not know how to help except with their indifference; no one will abandon the old God, but for that very reason they are denying Christ; there is confusion everywhere, wherever one looks.”
I dreamed of an E Major Symphony; R. had told me yesterday that the symphony of his which Mendelssohn lost, and which he would like to find again, just to demonstrate how well he knew his job, was in E major.
“If you take things as they come without discrimination, you will remain calm and still in love as in tribulation.” This old verse, quoted in Gutzkow’s novel Enn Ellrodt, touches me very much and will become my motto. (The novel was sent me by friend Feustel, because it has to do with the history of Bayreuth.)
Long walk with R. through the woods and the cornfields, which are full of cornflowers; I tell R. my idea for the reverse side of the medallion, about which our medal maker was uncertain. I am thinking of myth and music creating drama, and when I tell R. that this should take the form of portraits to keep the allegory from seeming cold and stiff, he suggests Ludwig Schnorr and [Wilhelmine] Schröder-Devrient.
Happy mood during our walk, as always when we are together and undisturbed. Recently in the carriage he said to me, “If I take my eyes off you, it is only to consider how to give you real pleasure.” Our return is spoiled by the “general,” whom R. espies at the window. R. decides to let him come up late in the evening. His coarseness appalls us, and his presence at the Fantaisie seems to us vaguely sinister. R. very put out.
Letters from Herr von G[ersdorff], who is pleased with R.’s article, and from Malwida, who tells us of the “general’s” importunities and the continuation of the dispute with Weissheimer, of which we hear nothing, thank God.