Wednesday, August 25:
During the night some distress, not because of the humiliation inflicted on me by Frau von Bülow, but arising from thoughts about my father and my own situation, which he is making so much worse for me.
In the morning a nice letter from Judith Mendès; she is beside herself, the theater director will not let her into rehearsals of Das Rheingold. Still the same old game! R. had telegraphed him very curtly; he reads the text to me. I beg him to let Richter deal with the matter, which he does.
I then write to Judith and tell her what my father has done to me, since she asks whether she should visit him. Also wrote to Franz Lenbach, who had replied with a simple expression of sympathy to my description of my situation.
Meanwhile R. begins on the instrumentation of Act III. After lunch, with the children to Lulu’s piano lesson, then did some botany with them, finally went to meet R. In the evening piano duets, a Mozart symphony and a Beethoven quartet.
R. says to me we have time on our side, all we have to do is live long. Recently, when walking to the Lucerne cemetery, I said to him, “I have no wish to die.” I have been supplied by Fate with a sorrow, a happiness, an activity: Hans, Richard, the children. The sorrow cannot pass, any more than the happiness can ever be clouded or the activity cease.