Thursday, May 15:
R. tells me in the morning that he dreamed we were together in Berlin, and a friend visited him. After I had left the room, he asked this friend, “Well, what do you think of my wife?” “Oh,” he replied, “I had thought she would be very domestic in outlook, but now I see that everything in her comes from a completely different direction!” On that, R. woke up with tears in his eyes.
He then dreamed he had received 600 francs in gold; when he got up he discovered that Fritzsch had actually sent him nearly this sum. After breakfast he settles down to his morning reading and soon comes to me, laughing loudly, and reads me Holtzmann’s quotation about Villemarqué, again magnificently French!
Great delight in the black birds in the trees in front of our windows! R. goes out and returns in high spirits: the palace gardener has been ordered to construct our gate! Happy enjoyment of this victory! The house! Valuable now because we have a son, otherwise pointless. “Often I really have the feeling that I am being borne along and sustained by the fairies.” (Meanwhile I hold a theater conference.)
Unfortunately our high spirits are much damped by a letter from Herr Fürstner in Berlin. He intends to publish Tannhäuser in French and German, and what is the point of this affront, except to bypass R. by buying the new scenes from Flaxland? So from one Jew to another! Yet he feels no shame in telling R. of it!
In the evening we read some excellent articles, The Semitic and the German Races in the New German Empire, which a Herr Beta has sent to R., requesting permission to dedicate them to him.