Saturday, September 5:
R. works, finds it difficult to concentrate, however, and has to orchestrate one page twice. I have several letters to write after giving the children their lessons. After lunch, over coffee, R. sings me “Mad Margaret” from La Dame blanche and says what an impression it made on him in his youth; he then thinks how touching it would be to visualize Fidi returning home to Wahnfried after a long absence! Care would have to be taken that it was well looked after during his unavoidable excursions into the world, perhaps by one of his sisters, if she did not marry.
Last night, since he was not sleeping, R. thought about his will, worked out some details. “I don’t believe it would have hurt me to have been brought up to such a property,” R. says. I observe that he would have sold it to put his ideas into effect! Reverting to La Dame blanche, R. says, “That was the finest characteristic of the French, and it is expressed in this opera: a sort of melancholy recklessness, which meets all sadness with a smile.”
In the afternoon a visit from our friends Heckel and Dr. Zeroni from Mannheim, who have just seen Tristan in Munich. Great joy in these excellent friends. Dr. Zeroni has become (or remained?) an Old Catholic, being convinced that Germany will be ruined if this movement does not expand. He is going to the meeting in Bonn which Döllinger has called for September 14. R. grows lively, says they should perfect Protestantism, the German church, and not fix their gaze on Catholicism; he outlines to them the external reasons why Protestantism has not become more widespread.