Friday, April 18:
Snow, and yesterday I noticed the first hints of green in our garden! But R. slept well. At breakfast we discuss the articles on tariffs, and R. says: “One might ask why we fought a war with France if nothing has come of it but this fear. It is even worse than it was before, to have this specter of a French threat eternally before our eyes.” — R. works, tells me he will probably be happy with his conception by the end of April, and then he will take some time off: “If it weren’t for my love for you, no God would ever induce me to orchestrate Parsifal.” — Herr Rubinstein at lunch, R. very lively. He does not go out, and gaily calls out “Cuckoo” to me when I look out of my room, where I am sorting through some pretty things which have arrived for May 22, to see whether he might not perhaps be there! . . .
In the evening he plays to Herr R. a part of his Fantasie (a youthful work), and then he reads aloud some things by and about Novalis from Carlyle’s essay; much pleasure in Novalis’s judgment on Wilhelm Meister, also on Klopstock; I can follow him, though only because of R.’s writings—R.’s words about Mignon, about the role of illusion in a nation’s development, etc.