Thursday, December 26:
R. had a very good night - this blessing to crown my happiness! Discussed the glorious performance in detail. How beautifully the clarinet played in the trio of the minuet movement of the F major! Then R. says that Fidi, to whom he had each time thrown his cap for safekeeping, had looked magnificent, resembling his father Geyer. I: “Father Geyer must surely have been your father.” R.: “I don’t believe that.” “Then why the resemblance?” R.: “My mother loved him at the time - elective affinities.”
We eat out today at Lieutenant Colonel Schaffer’s, but R. is very tired there; on his behalf I beg that he may be allowed to leave, but he stays seated and by the end of the meal looks somewhat better. As we are riding home, he says, “Yes, we must not leave Wahnfried too often.” We then look at the room which has now really become his music room; the magic still pervades it. Everything - the relationship of the orchestra to the room, the acoustics, the choice of works and order of their playing, the number of people present - it was all just right, successful in all respects; and even the present disorder is not disturbing - it reminds us of what has been!
In the evening I put on the “Marajah,” as R. calls another dress he gave me after giving all the measurements to Steckner in Leipzig and bringing into being a very rich, fantastic, and extremely becoming article of clothing. He is very pleased with it. Talked a lot about music and the concert. How everything, everything, lies in the nature of genius; it is not even the correct tempo which makes the difference, but the power which a genius has over his fellow beings. We talk away the evening in the lilac salon. R. says my dress is like the one Alexander wore after defeating Darius.