Friday, December 25:
In the morning I hear the Idyll, and after it the Rose- und Kosenlied. R. and I are in tears. Afterwards I learn how R. arranged this whole secret. The orchestra from Hof was engaged, and he conducted the rehearsal yesterday in the Hotel Sonne. He tells me how well the children behaved at the rehearsal, modestly and without giving themselves airs. We breakfast in the salon, while the musicians play pieces from Tannhäuser and Die Meistersinger. Blessed day. In fair sounds and sweet words R. is telling me that I may count my birthday blessed, since he thus celebrates it. What right do I have to this crown?
Lovely evening with the children, a sacred occasion. Tat tvam asi, R. keeps calling out to me. That is you, you are everything, everything has been conjured up by you. At supper yesterday we had to laugh heartily when R. declared he was now so lazy that he thinks he must be glistening like rotten wood. This brings us to Baron Reichenbach’s Od, and he told us that one night when his wife Minna could not sleep she asked him what time it was. The room was completely dark, but he took his watch in his hand and said, "Eleven minutes to 9." When she laughed at him for his impertinence, he made a light and saw that he had read it quite correctly. In the margin: Thought of Marie Much.
We are transported to solemn reflections by the fact that R. met Prof. Nagelsbach, our neighbor, and, asking him how the holidays had begun, received the answer: Not well, for our youngest child died at 10 o’clock. Just as if the little one had not wished to spoil our pleasure, we were still able to give the others their presents; when we then went up to the bedroom, the child was dying. Today a mason fell from the theater building and was killed. It reminds one of Eduard and Ottilie, when at such times one always wishes to be and is happy, yet what can dim the happiness of love, this star that gleams through all tempests?
When I told R. in the evening that this had been my happiest birthday, he asked me why, and I replied, "Because Götterdämmerung has been completed and thus the real worry of our life removed!"