Tuesday, February 25:
R. again had a very wretched night. God knows when this will improve! I dreamed that I wept bitterly at the news that Hans had poor receipts for his concerts! R. slept so badly that he got up and wrote a distich to Herwegh. We cannot get over the petty tone of Herwegh’s poem, which anyway he learned from Heine, when the latter once scoffed at him.
“Yes,” said R., “these German peasants, that’s what happens when they go to Paris and learn democratic idiocies; I am convinced poor Herwegh was desolated by Sedan!” The conversation leads us to [Johann] Sebastian Bach and how he himself must have played his things. R. is of the opinion that the manner of playing was dictated entirely by the organ, and lacked nuances; he says it was Mozart who first introduced nuances, that is to say, coloring, which is probably how he came to be compared with Raphael.
Boni is somewhat better. I write all kinds of letters in connection with R.’s birthday; R. writes a splendid letter to Dr. Baumeister. Went with the four children to view the new house. In the evening the Pancha tantra and folk songs from the Seven Years’ War, the Wars of Liberation, and the war with France.