Wednesday, March 26:
The weather still cold. R. had a tolerable night in spite of a bad dream, brought about by a cat in the palace gardens which climbed swiftly onto a tree stump and from there triumphantly mocked the dogs; in it I was cold toward him (my father always behind it), and he had been the barking dog! All the same, he works. After lunch we talk a lot about Phocion, and R. remarks how decadent periods suddenly produce such men, whose greatness and strength become even greater and more noble precisely on account of the decline. Yesterday he told Rubinstein that what he needed was a Peabody to leave him a large sum of money in his will.
In the evening he writes a few lines to friend Wolzogen about the third issue, and since the latter at once comes over to the house, he is rewarded with some music making: the first act of Tristan. R. says with a laugh that people will later think our era must have been a strange one, when one could offer the public works like that. In fact, he says, he has produced nothing new since Tristan, whereupon I observe that even from a technical point of view Die Meistersinger, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung contain new ideas. But what he meant was that there had been no need for him to write a single note more; he could just have said, “Do it as I do.” So he thinks!