Wednesday, May 1:
R. slept well but still has his ailment and has to stay in bed. A sore trial! All the same, he works and writes the conclusion of his “Public and Popularity” article. He then manages to drag himself into the garden and sits down on a bench, from which he calls to me. I struggle hard to show him a cheerfulness I no longer feel, but it returns to me as I sit with R. on the steps outside the salon and we watch and listen to a blackbird; the greenery of the trees delights him, and the church towers can be seen through a faint mist.
In the evening, Ivanhoe. The uncle, as the children call Seidl, returns home from Leipzig and gives us good reports of Schelper, but bad ones of the production, music and action never together. “None of them has any idea of what the main thing in my works is,” R. says. “Good night, Paradeta,” he calls out to me.