Sunday, June 30:
Again R. woke up in the night and had to get out of bed; he feels tired and would prefer to give up his cure. But at lunch he is again fresh and cheerful.
He has sent for a hairdresser for me and wants my blonde hair to be brought out; I would prefer to keep my gray hairs, but if he wants it thus, I shall also be happy; he wants me to have it done in an Apollo knot and intends to study etchings of the ancient Greeks!
At lunch discussion of the children’s journey to Dresden (Loldi and Fidi) to have their teeth seen to. R. talks about his former homes there, one of them on Moritzstrasse, where the “Kasperl” had hung; he says his father had hung a Kasperl, a large metal puppet, on the door of the dining room, to scare him off if he tried to creep into the room when forbidden; it had successfully scared him off. And of the other apartment in Judenhof: an armorer named Voigt lived below them, and he had once made a sword, intended as a Christmas present for R., dance on a red leather strap before his eyes, before immediately hiding it again. He recalls his father with some emotion.
Then our conversation moves to the concert in Leipzig where we met and were so merry together in spite of all our misfortunes: “We were always smiling amid tears.” When we part in the afternoon, he exclaims, “Oh, gods, feast your eyes on this blessed couple!” Then, when we meet again in the afternoon and stroll around the garden, we recall the time when Die Meistersinger was being written, also that day in the Schiff when R. played to me the end of the second act of Siegfried. “Oh, it was a time of discontent, and something tremendous had to come along to restore my urge to create.” [Added in margin: “‘Oh, my one and only one!’ R.: ‘You get things muddled, like your datives and accusatives: that is you.’ — ‘How can you be so good to me?’ — ‘Why shouldn’t I be? You get lovelier every day.’ ”] Then R. says to me: “You will have a bit of peace and quiet when the children are all grown up. That is what you lack - a morning philosophy.” Much laughter about that. In the evening we read some of Voltaire’s prose writings (Réponse d’un docteur allemand) and discover in them, as Herwegh once remarked to R., a source of much of Heine’s wit.