Sunday, October 13:
R. had a somewhat disturbed night, but in the morning he feels reasonably well. He promises to tell me when the 2nd act is finished, and at 12 o'clock he does so. How to find words for this happiness?
In the evening R. says that if anybody had come in and seen us, he would have taken us for a couple of lunatics, I “gobbling up the notes, sometimes helping, guessing,” he “playing furiously.” But it is my pride and joy that I was really able to follow him, and it was all revealed to me!
In the afternoon R. goes for a walk and, when I come upon him, he is lying on the couch beneath the palm. In the evening he plays the Andante from Mozart's D major Symphony, truly glorious; he observes that it would flow even more smoothly with an orchestra. We stay up quite late together.
When Marie Hohenlohe is mentioned, he says that what made her outburst against him such a sore spot was that it took place at a time when things were going well for him. “In earlier times,” he adds with his usual mildness, “she would perhaps not have fought it out to the finish.” Then he smiles: “But all these people should not be probed into too deeply, they are much too trivial.” “So I can still compose?” he says to me, when I go on feeling the urge to speak to him about the 2nd act but am unable to say a word!
In the evening he says very emphatically that he does not wish to stage Parsifal; he would like to pay back the money to the Society members and have nothing to do with singers and orchestra, and above all not with the management of the Munich theater.