Saturday, June 8:
R. had a good night. He sings the andante theme from the Adagio of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and says, "That is really a dance, a theme for a minuet, and so with this andante the structure of the Adagio is nicely variegated." Then from Figaro he sings "Perdona, Signora": "It's like flowing honey, this melody of Mozart's," he says. "If only in performances one did not have to put up with those wretched singers, the Count, some dressed-up brat as Cherubino, a vulgar Susanna! The performances I had in mind for my school would have been in Italian, French operas such as La Dame Blanche in French. These language studies would have done something to counteract the singer's vulgarity."
When we separate to go to our daily work, he jokes, "Your father would be disgusted at the time it takes us to do things!" R. does some work and then decides on an outing to the Sophienberg, which we then carry out in the gayest of spirits. A woman who was here today carried the barrel of beer up for us. R. gives her 2 marks afterward; she looks at him very earnestly, gives him her hand, and wishes us a happy time "for thinking of the day."
The scurrying of the children, who run up and down the hill like messengers, delights him: "Ten horses couldn't drag me away from here." Much joking lamento: not enough tobacco in his box; before that, ham-stitches, "I've eaten too much ham, that's why I got stitches." "Uncle" Seidl taps the barrel. Home at 8:30, Fidi's memory of the "rough mountaintop" on the Sophienberg makes R. laugh.
In the evening some Schopenhauer letters. The Emperor's condition satisfactory; but Bismarck "en colère," as R. puts it, threatening to dissolve the Reichstag if it does not accept the laws. On top of that a conference of three gout sufferers! Even Moltke mentions in the Reichstag the dismal possibility of the army's marching against the people! The head of the Church Council talks sensibly about the state's atonement, to which the A.A.Z. adds a mocking exclamation point! The Emperor in the simplicity of his character truly great.
In the evening, while we are simultaneously discussing various things and forgetting everything else, R. exclaims to me, "You are all I have, but you are also the only one." And later: "Set wigs of million curls upon your heads, all this" (he means his work) "seems to me like a wig, though I haven't set it on myself, it has been set on me."