Sunday, August 18:
The children in church, I with Fidi in the garden; write letters to M. Meysenbug and A. Frommann. R. is worn out, but works a little on his essay. Family lunch.
Afterward the musicians, five in number. R. plays them the third act of Götterdämmerung, which absolutely stuns them. Herr Niemann says that no one will ever be able to perform it like R. himself.
At supper Herr Levi remarks that, though he had gone along with Bismarck in everything, he could not agree with him on the Jesuit law, whereupon R. became very angry and depicted in lively words all the damage which the Catholic church had done to Germany.
Then we come to the pitiful way in which the German victories were celebrated in Germany, particularly in Berlin. Shortly after Metz, Louis Schneider had telegraphed Niemann commissioning a scene depicting the awakening of Barbarossa, which had astonished Niemann very much, and he had actually later been obliged to play Barbarossa, with tableaux vivants and some wretched music. He said he had felt ashamed of acting out this farce in front of the heroes.
In the evening, when the gentlemen are about to go, I have the inspiration of asking R. to read Die Kapitulation, which he then does. At parting, Herr L. tells me he is downright glad to be leaving, for he feels such a complete nonentity here, and will have to try and find himself again. A curious attitude. I should have thought one would only find oneself properly when one was confronted with a great man and could forget oneself.
R. is very tired in the evening and complains that he can enjoy me, our union, so little, since there is always some worry, some duty, intervening. I feel it is like a dream, which is nothing but a distraction; thus it is in the dream of life. One is consumed with longing, but when one has achieved what one longed for, one is not allowed to enjoy it.