Saturday, April 19:
R. dreamed about Mendelssohn, whom he addressed in the second person singular, then, secondly, that he had to steer a pontoon across the water, nobody could tell him how, and R. turned to General Moltke with a military salute; but he was a total simpleton, and R. said to himself, “What false ideas people have of him!” He works, but at lunch complains of tightness in his chest. It is still very cold, and he decides on a week’s break, to the Rhine district, Baden-Baden, Mannheim. ...
I saw off our niece E. Ritter, who has been staying with us during the last 4 weeks; a nice child. — R. enjoys the B. Blätter and above all an article from the 15th century in the Illustrierte, which he reads with me; it is about Saint George, and it does indeed conjure up a complete picture of the German character, with its imaginativeness, its earnestness, and its naivete. — R. is not feeling well, says he could not bear to spend another winter here. And in the morning we parted with such tender good spirits!
In the evening our Wolzogen friends, but under no good star; R. reads aloud his sketch for a New Year farce, plays his Romeo and Juliet theme, but our friends’ silence irritates him; and he comments on it, which does not improve their conversational powers! An attempt to read a preface to Shakespeare’s sonnets also fell flat, though R. is very pleased by the interpretation; all the same, he stopped reading it, saying it was too philological. And so the minutes dragged by, until Herr R. suggested playing my father’s Tasso.