Monday, April 26:
Preparations for departure; visit to Menzel, whose brother-in-law welcomes us with strains from Götterdämmerung; looked at folios. To the hotel at one o’clock, lunch with Lothar Bucher, laughed a lot over Mommsen, his dishonest behavior and that of other scholars in the Lauenburg affair.
Spoke about the Prince [Bismarck], whose policies were actually thwarted by the Empress’s intrigues (outside Paris, for example, it was impossible to attack, since the shells did not arrive; it eventually turned out that the trains had all been commandeered by the Empress and Princess Victoria to take provisions to the Parisians!). Matters of the most important kind have to be postponed because the Empress plagues the Emperor about them so much that the doctors fear a stroke. Bismarck downright incensed, ill. — Many visitors to be received afterward; at 5 o’clock dinner in the Office of the Royal Household. There I talk to the editor of Kladderadatsch and demand the support of his periodical for Bayreuth. — Departure at 7 o’clock; the two concerts have brought in about 6,000 thalers - a lot in view of the unfavorable circumstances. Journeyed through the night, glad and happy to be back on Bavarian soil.