Wednesday, January 14:
R. dreamed that Beethoven came to invite him to attend the performance of a symphony. “Good Lord, is he not dead after all? No, this was a dream that he was dead.” He went toward him; each attempted to kneel before the other, and they stood there, arrested in the act of genuflection. Then I came in, dressed in a pink-and-red morning dress, and Beeth. said, somewhat in the manner of Goethe, whose stature he had, “Ah, a lovely woman!” R. went to prepare a seat for him, turning Herr v. St.’s bed into a divan by quickly concealing the bedclothes, and his vain exertions woke him up.
He tells us this at lunch, then reverts to our conversation of last night, saying that it was the word “transcendental” which had so upset him. “It always seems to descend on you!” he says cordially. Splendid weather, R.’s first outing as far as the palm tree, with me, which enchants him. Roses and carnations are in bloom, and Dr. Schron, whom I had summoned, calms all my fears.
In the afternoon R. walks to the pavilion and returns home enchanted, though the penetrating cry of a beggar-woman had pierced him with its piteousness: “One can call it play-acting, but it is terrible that such play-acting is necessary; need has turned this woman’s cry into her second nature.” We talk about folk songs; R. feels they scarcely exist here, for years ago he discovered that opera arias had already usurped everything else; he remarks on the extent to which Italian opera alienated the French from themselves; Boieldieu, Auber, they all paled before Rossini.