Thursday, September 4:
Dispatching the circulars. In the course of it, R. breaks the gold pen with which he wrote Tristan, Die Meistersinger, and in fact everything since ’68. It grieves me all the more since it happened while he was just pointing with the pen to the place on which patching is a strain on him.
After lunch in the garden, where very unexpectedly Schuré comes rushing toward us! A hearty welcome in spite of everything! At supper, when he asks for Bordeaux wine “out of patriotism,” and I reprove him for trying to provoke us, R. explains to him earnestly and at length what it means to be and to wish to be German, that is to say, to feel a longing which cannot be fulfilled in Latin countries; here in Germany, he says, the question can at least still be asked; our armies have shown that strength is still there, and now we are anxiously waiting to see whether this strength can extend to other fields. “My dear friend,” he concludes, “I am not to be counted among the ranks of the present-day patriots, for what a person can suffer under present conditions I am already suffering. I am, as it were, nailed on the cross of the German ideal.”
After supper R. very charmingly takes out Berlioz’s memoirs, which Schuré gave me, and asks me to read from them the anecdotes about Cherubini, which then transport us right back to France.