Saturday, March 29:
R. again slept badly; it is always people's malice which upsets him.
Spring makes me feel curiously vulnerable. For the first time in many years I am experiencing it in a town, and my mood of longing is only increased by that. We go, R. and I, to the new house, and R. is vexed that it is progressing so slowly.
We recently spoke of the many moves R. has undertaken, the innumerable houses in which he has lived. "Now for the first time," he says, "the foundation has been laid for a sensible life; I always had too few means, too irregular an income - I have always been living like a beggar, in fact."
We then, in splendid weather, take a lengthy walk all around the town. I do not know how we came to the subject of the meal with which Louis XVI refreshed himself in his hour of terror, but I say, "That does not look very well."
"Why not?" R. lectures me. "I find it very touching. He was a Christian, he forgave and ordered himself a chicken. The estimable men, like Charles I, Ezzelino, and Louis XIV, prefer to starve if they cannot eat as it pleases them. But this one had given in; so to what purpose heroics? He was confronted with brutes, he gave himself up, and showed himself as a human being with natural needs, though otherwise fearless in the face of death. He is nearer to us than the pedigreed animals who feel only rage and hate in such situations."
We return home, and R. finds himself facing many vexations, first of all Herr Batz's impudent meddling in the concerts in Cologne and London; secondly, a letter from Herr Hartel saying he has lithographed Lohengrin, so he does not consider it worthwhile to engrave the score which brings him in so much money!
Then, however, good letters from Milan, reporting that Lohengrin has now had its fifth performance before a packed audience, though always against vociferous opposition, which was nevertheless triumphantly overcome. The Philharmonic Society in New York has made R. an honorary member. Yet New York regularly sends us a newspaper which contains nothing but abuse of R.!
In the evening dictation - great dismay over Niemann's cynicism; one asks oneself how it would be possible ever again to have anything to do with such a man!