Friday, June 4:
R. did not have too bad a night, and he is able to work on his long article, the outline of which he described to me at breakfast; with such a subject, he says, one must be more circumspect, it is not like a review of an opera.
A gray day, sirocco, R. not entirely well and somewhat out of humor, but always kind to me; when I return from town with Malwida, I find a heap of popping pods on my dressing table, for me to burst. This is now his and the children's main amusement.
In the evening Herr Rubinstein comes and plays pieces from Parsifal, R. not satisfied with his playing, and how little one can teach others. He allows himself now and again to be tempted into singing, but it is a strain on him, and after some expressions of disgust he ends by comparing himself with the bass singer Kneisel, who, losing his memory during Matteo's aria, stopped singing, went off into the wings, but kept returning to the stage and striking up again.
He glances through the Schiller-Goethe correspondence, but says it is all very familiar to him, and it does not give him the impression of two masters talking together, rather, two pupils, two experimenters. He has finally given up Flaubert's Tentation and puts the book down in disgust.