Saturday, July 5:
A good night! Cheerful breakfast. At the end of it he wishes me God’s blessing, the “true and good” god, whom he knows and can define, and he adds jokingly, “You are the goddess, so now ask yourself who the god is!”
Bad weather, cold and wet. R. reads C. Frantz, then goes through Cherubini’s Faniska by himself, dismayed by its dryness and turgidity, despite some interesting features. In the evening some things by Glinka are played through, from Ruslan and Ludmilla, and R. remarks how nothing is ever learned from the great German masters, and foreigners base themselves exclusively on French stereotypes. Then Berlioz’s “Queen Mab” and parts of the love scene, with little enjoyment. To end with, R. explains to us C. Frantz’s ideas on taxes. A sad reflection on the careless, heartless manner in which such things are written about nowadays!
[The following postscript in the lower margin was obliterated in ink by an unknown hand: “R. says he feels downright disgusted with Frederick the Great for establishing the ...; he himself is only interesting for a few individual features, otherwise a kind of caricature!”]