Monday, July 7:
As might have been expected, last night was much like the previous ones; R. got up, read C. Frantz, took a sip of cognac, returned to bed, and then went to sleep again. The weather is bad, cold and wet. A nice letter from Dr. Schron relieves our fears of being taken to court over Naples, and from Bremen a cigar merchant named Wagner asks R. very naively to become his son’s godfather, promising to bring him up in such a way that R.’s “all-round reputation” will not be affected.
In the afternoon I go to see Herr Gross with my letter to Herr Bürkel, in which I ask to have a new paragraph inserted in the contract, and learn from him of the difficulties: that the King’s end is felt to be nigh, and that Herr Feustel and Herr Gross have been assuring the skeptical bank in Coburg in particular that the contract would be observed without fail. I ask Herr Gross himself to edit the announcement, which everybody feels must be made. When I go to R. to report on the success of my mission, I find him stretched out on the chaise longue, the “Muchanoff,” in the salon, much upset. The weather, his own position, which in a certain sense remains unaltered, the enormous expenditures revealed by his current account, all this is indeed enough to depress him. Already at lunch he had been talking of emigrating to America.
But he rouses himself to write a letter to the King in which he says that he wishes to produce Parsifal only when funds are such as to ensure that performances can be given every three years, financed from the interest on the capital. After writing these 7 pages he looks refreshed, but he explains that, out of joy at having completed them at all, he has drunk too much beer. At supper he tells me that he personally has taken C. Frantz’s book to the mayor. He is also presenting it to Prof. Fries and K. Kolb. Around lunchtime he wrote a verse in the copy of Parsifal belonging to the 7th Infantry Regiment. Whist in the evening; R. very amused by the bad luck we both always have at cards.
Trials in the evening, again the question of emigrating! “Each seventh year he went a-wooing!” R. recalls his hopes that a group of people, “select” if not large in number, would follow us here. What will become of our children? I stick to my view that whoever grows up under his protection can be called blessed.