Wednesday, April 9:
R. is looking better, but he still feels the tightness in his chest, severe enough to send for the doctor, who comes and prescribes Eger water, then two or three weeks in the South, which produces from R. the remark, “Are you out of your senses?”! . . . During the afternoon I strolled with R. in the garden; mild weather, but the barometer is showing “world’s ending,” as R. says.
R. so preoccupied with his work that at lunch he suddenly gets up from the table to make an alteration. In the evening whist, and after that read Carlyle’s “Diderot” with great interest. R. says he has a mind to send something of his own to Carlyle, and he adds, “The English are justified in expecting something from their literature, since a writer there is somewhat different from a writer here; he is a free man, has a cottage of his own, or, like Grote, he is a banker and does not live off his writings.” I ask R. whether he would approve my going to Communion this year with the two elder girls; he says yes, and with the feelings that this prospect arouses, we part.
Thursday, April 10:
The possible arrival of my father, the need to inform the dean, Loldi’s birthday lead me to the children early, after wishing R. a good morning, and delay me there a while; this greatly upsets R., and when I try to make my excuses, he says, “Why did you make our routine so pleasant for me?” - meaning that he now cannot bear even the slightest deviation.
Vain wait for my father. For lunch Herr Levi, who stays all day. In the evening Parsifal - from the first act, the entrance of the Knights; from the second, the Flower Maidens; from the third, the anointment, the “Good Friday Music,” and (still in the penciled sketches) the “elegy.” While Rubinstein is playing, even singing quietly, and Levi listening with great emotion, R. says softly to me, “What touching figures they are!” Beatific high spirits following our ecstatic bliss.