Sunday, January 20:
Everything evenly balanced: love and the blessings of work. In the evening R. improvises the Communion service in the way he has now designed it: "The percussion will accompany the singing, like a faint earth tremor."
R. looked through Berlioz's scores of the Requiem and Te Deum and laughed over the many instructions they contain for the percussion players, etc., etc.; he said it reminded him of a theater director setting straight the wigs of his actors; the uproar on the "rex tremendae majestatis" made him laugh heartily. He goes for a short walk in the palace gardens. I am delighted with his appearance in the evening: "I feel so well," he tells me with shining eyes. I am filled with both bliss and apprehension oh, this mortal life! R. says, "Fidi looks at me the way Parsifal looks on the Grail, in a wonder of amazement."