Wednesday, July 10:
R. did not have a bad night, but unfortunately the weather is wretched: overcast sky, rain, and the house is cold. R. suffers very much from it.
I catalogue the manuscripts with friend Glasenapp, a beloved and refreshing occupation for me. When I tell R. about it, he says, “You foolish girl!” When I tell him I have been reading some of his letters to the King, he says, “Oh, those don’t sound very good, but it wasn’t I who set the tone.”
R. also begins to feel better, and he writes a very lively and funny letter to Malwida [von Meysenbug], declaring that, since all present-day musicians are Schumannians, Beethoven really lived in vain. But unfortunately his mood does not persist, and even such nice people as Gl. prove a burden to him. When we are alone, his cheerfulness always returns, in spite of his not feeling well.
After supper we go for a walk, first in the garden, then in the palace gardens, where we are surrounded by swarms of fireflies, thoughts of Die Meistersinger: “Here comes one to greet you,” R. calls out to me. He tells me the story of Saint Radegunde from the Récits mérovingiens, which he says has given him “a very good idea of those times.”
On our return home R. reads me something from the second part of the Nibelungenlied in the Simrock translation, which we find rather pedestrian. Regarding iambics, R. says, “The trouble is that they force one to be too long, not too short.” He says the Schlegel translations are for him a fine monument to the German language.