Friday, April 17:
R. is plagued by a headache in consequence of the Thursday gathering; he cannot work and goes to the house. I cannot give him support, since, being beset by a severe cough, I have to stay at home.
In the evening R. says to me: “I believe it would not take much now to make me feel an insuperable disgust for the whole Bayreuth undertaking, and regret having written my works, just as Goethe regretted ever having had anything to do with the theater. Today I saw a theater journal, and the mere thought of people sending such things to me, of my having any contact with such people, filled me with repugnance.”
In the evening he reads me Freytag’s account of the Thirty Years’ War in Pictures of German Life - terrible.