Tuesday, April 2:
R. woke up with a loud cry. “Spirits, phantoms; they were playing D, F sharp, A on the Geneva F-sharp harmonica, but it came out as G sharp, G, E, and I knew who they were.” He goes to sleep again; I remain awake and at dawn hear a sweet little bird singing. R. works and is looking forward to what he has to do, for he is now working out the theme he wrote down some time ago.
At noon I receive from Marie Pusinelli the news of the death of our friend. I decide not to give R. the news until the end of the evening; I order wreaths and conceal my feelings from R., who is enjoying the springlike weather. We go for a walk together, delight in the birds, particularly a splendid finch which R. points out to me.
In the evening he works out what he sketched in the morning and shows me with much enjoyment the transition to gentleness: “It had to pass from turbulence to tenderness.” At supper an unkind fate decrees that Herr Stern send me a reply, which I was not expecting. R. opens the telegram. Silence. He gets up and goes out, comes back after a little while; I at once start to read a further installment of Herr Porges’s article; earnest discussion. Friend W. reads his article on Schemann’s collected works.
Present-day art, present-day theater leads R. to the performance of Le Paruffe Chiot4py>tte, which he once saw; we read Goethe’s description of the play. An article by Herr Lindau, mentioned by W., about the unfortunate effect of our classical writers on the theater, the need to form a link with Molière: “As if we possessed a society for which and from which we could work!” I said to R. He: “Yes, we can succeed only with the truly ideal, for then we speak to the souls that feel the need for this ideal.”
Our friends leave: “Let’s go straight to bed,” says R. On the stairs I ask, “You understood the telegram?” He: “Oh!” We prepare for sleep; in bed he says, “He was a small man but a great heart, an unflinchingly great heart, which helped him to understand everything, and that was the reason for his happy career.”