Saturday, March 9:
Snow flurries and stormy weather, also weariness and neuralgia for me. R., however, is fairly well, and very cheerful.
In the evening we return to our usual occupation; we read Waverley, agreeing that in it the great novelist, then still a beginner, spreads himself somewhat thin in many places, and he uses dialogue for things which would perhaps be better narrated. R. is in excellent spirits; he very humorously enlarges upon the present fashions for men and describes his struggles doing up buttons. As we are laughing heartily, he says to Seidl, 'Yes, Seidl, you won't always have such an entertaining companion at your side!' Nice letter from the King.
To conclude the evening R. plays the beginning of Weber's Euryanthe Overture, and we are both lost in admiration for the radiant beauty, integrity, chivalrous nobility against which the tender femininity is displayed. R. feels that a German theater should be opened with this work, rather than with Fidelio, which is much more conventional and cold. As we are going to bed, he once again thinks of Weber, and says, 'I feel so closely akin to him; maybe that is because my childhood was associated with him.'
At lunch R. says he has discovered the years of his life to be 96, he has added 1878 together, 18 and 78. He finds the Blätter very enjoyable.