Monday, March 10:
R. drank some yarrow tea late in the evening, on our doctor’s advice, and it helped him to gain a good night’s sleep. He plays passages from the third act of Lohengrin as he puts on his clothes; how very preoccupied he always is when he is dressing, how high-spirited, indeed how productive! He says he has a good mind to tell his joke in public: that it was his misfortune that Napoleon had not won, for then Napoleon would have become Germany’s ruler, would have familiarized himself with German things at once, and would have built R.’s theater for him.
The Duke of Dessau has taken up two certificates of patronage. R. finishes his essay on the Ninth Symphony.
In the afternoon we go for a walk together, to the Feustels’, then visit our house, and worry about its dampness; thoughts of Fidi. If there is no fortune for him, he can shut off the bottom story and live very comfortably above it. I hope he will cherish this property which keeps his father so busy in his behalf!
In the evening, the biography; oh, all these meaningless trials! No amount of love and care, I feel, can ever make up for them! I tell R. this in my own way, whereupon he replies jokingly: “You are not content when people are everything to each other; they have to keep on saying it!”