Tuesday, May 14:
Mime rehearsal with the children. R. got a letter from Herr Neumann in Leipzig; he has received an invitation from Paris to give performances there but has flatly refused. Performances are also desired in Berlin, in the Viktoria Theater, and R. agrees, a curious state of affairs.
Since I am tired, R. puts the W. s off, and we spend the evening alone, to our great contentment! R. plays to me Herzeleide’s distress, her anxiety, her death. Then we read some curious articles which have been sent to R.: an attack on Kladderadatsch and an appeal for Christianity.
R. feels it is a very bad thing to deprive the people of their religion, and he quotes the noble words of the Wandsbecker Bote on Christianity. He is pleased with Renan’s Saint Paul, and he reads to me with his splendid delivery the First Epistle to the Corinthians in Luther’s translation. The evening passes blissfully; every annoyance arising from the outside world is banished, illusion finds peace, and we conclude the day in love!