Tuesday, January 27:
Went to the house early; when I return home, R. shows me a letter from the King which he did not wish to read, and I should tell him what it contains. I see at once that it is very friendly. The King promises never to give up his mission in life, and says the delay was forced on him only by the state of his purse. He treats Prof. Dahn's poem as sycophancy and knows that R. has better things to do than to embellish such verses. But still we are left in uncertainty, will he grant the guarantee or will he not? Heckel has forwarded the letter to the Grand Duke of Baden.
In the evening made more progress with the new Brahmanism. Before our reading we talked about the people who had all drifted away from him, such as the Brockhauses, Karl Ritter, the Willes, Laube, a vast number R. can trace throughout his life. I tell him he can also say, of his Ring des Nibelungen, “Those who listened to the first songs no longer hear the last!”
He replies: “I don't care much about that. For me these people have passed away before they have actually died, and I have what I want: you!” Today he played the end of the second act, the richest, most varied piece of work he has perhaps ever written, and the most acute in its dramatic accents.