Saturday, November 2:
All Souls’ Day! Not a good night for either of us, and when, in the early hours, we want to rest, the noise of the chimney sweep! Cheerful breakfast all the same — goodness knows how it is possible! I send the children to lay a wreath on the grave of our friend Dittmar. And in the afternoon go for a walk with them in the chilly sunshine. R. rests, but he has done some work, in spite of his tiredness. He also goes out in the palace gardens with the dogs, delights as I do in the moonlight and the ever-recurring feeling of being at home; I tell him about my many excursions, and he laughs at my report of my activities.
In the evening he gets Lusch to play the Huldigungsmarsch with Herr Kellermann as a piano duet. Reminiscences of the fate of this march — its dismal performance in the garden of the Munich Residenz, the King at a window, no members of the public present, a dull and cold November day. The Kaisermarsch also “scattered to the winds,” not to speak of the “Centennial” — “In front of Grant!”
When Lusch has gone, the quotation “You match the spirit that you comprehend” brings us to the efflorescence of Goethe’s genius in his youth, for which no praise can be too high. And what a happy circumstance that he was permitted to finish the work — his life in between was like Parsifal’s wanderings in the labyrinth. R. reads me passages from Lecky about asceticism: he is particularly struck by the sentence saying that during the first two centuries love was put in the forefront, during the 3rd and 4th centuries chastity, and that is what led to the excesses of cruelty. He enjoys reading the English writers, he says, for at the present time they have the clearest and most manly view of things. Great weariness.