Thursday, January 9:
Paid calls, among others to Herr Grossmann, the headmaster, to make some comments on the girls’ school. When I return home R. shows me a telegram from Strassburg which states that the things for me which R. has been expecting since Christmas have still not arrived. I go into the salon and find a huge array of things to wear, each lovelier than the next! My delight makes R. laugh.
Recently the Idyll was played for our friends, and we recalled how it sounded in Tribschen. “What a sound such a wind instrument makes!” R. says. “The strings are like a forest, and the woodwinds like the birds within it.” R. is thinking more and more about the topic “What is German?” The old dean visits us, wanting R. to accompany him to the Thursday gathering, but R. does not go. “He does not wish to leave you,” says the good dean, after he had inspected all my lovely things with friendly delight and told me I deserved them. In the evening read the chapter on God in Grimm’s Mythology.