Tuesday, April 30:
R. had a good night. N.’s pitiful book makes him exclaim to me, “We shall remain true to each other.” He works; the good news from Leipzig about Rheingold and Walküre pleases him. I visit friend Gross to find out how things stand with the capital loan. He tells me it had almost been settled when a jurist, the fourth J., frightened off the bank. He says the King insists that R. no longer have to worry about it; Herr Bürkel has done as much as he can, but he cannot very well show his face in a bank, for then it would be spread around that the King was getting into debt. He had only recently had to reply to some malicious articles in the Fränkische Zeitung entitled “The King of Bavaria and His Debts.”
In the evening R. feels severe pain in his leg; the physician discovers a furuncle and orders complete rest. To see him flat on his back robs me of all my strength, and when, as he frequently does, he sings to me “Sostegno e gloria dell’umanità” [“Support and glory of humanity”], I have to tell him this gloria does not amount to much, for when he is not shining, everything in and around me dies.