Wednesday, December 24:
R. had a somewhat restless night, and Evchen is still ill. A somewhat subdued presentation of gifts. Nice letter from an American professor of music, who is lecturing on R. in New Haven; R. will reply to him publicly through Wolz. Many reflections about America, “which will swallow us up as if we were nothing.” R. says that if he had known what experiences were awaiting him in Germany, he would have gone with me to America and planted his flag there. He says bitterly that the Emperor would probably be the main hurdle to overcome if Bismarck were really thinking of disarmament, as people are trying to infer from one of his letters (to Italy). “There one sees what vices we drag around with us,” R. exclaims.
The newspaper reports enclosed, one on the birth of a child due to the cold and the moving one about the executioner, were told me by R.: “He knew how to tame intractable fellows and then kill them with a sword, but he couldn’t face a repentant man and a guillotine. He must be a very curious character - when I find things like that in novels about crime they always fascinate me.” B. Blätter. At first we are quite horrified by the retainment of the pseudonym “Armand Pensier,” but then R. is so pleased with the article that he sends a telegram in approximately these words: “Why A. P., when you please me so much as Herr v. Stein? Merry Christmas.”
Presentation of gifts at 7 o’clock, Eva there, but very run down. In the afternoon, after arranging everything, I looked out at the golden sky from the gray room and thought of the “melody” - R. comes to me, jokes at first about my “melancholy,” then sits down beside me, and we reflect together. After the gifts in the evening he sits down at the piano and plays pieces from Tristan (and act) to me - ah, how wonderful! At our final parting in the evening, when I thank him, he says, “At that time I felt an uncontrollable urge to luxuriate in music,” and “When I went off to Venice that time, you should have said to me, ‘I am coming, too!’ I was like Tristan, didn’t understand you, and - you would have left Hans more easily than I would have given him up. I could almost say that it was our good luck that Hans did not remain on the heights. If he had, we should have been ruined. But if I had had you with me in Venice, we could have got by with your little property, and nobody would ever have seen me again!”
To the strains of Tristan we go to our rest - however great my happiness, that melody is always sounding in my heart.