Tuesday, July 6:
Not a very good night for R., but at breakfast he is lively as always, except that the subject he brings up (the regulation of the Greek border, the loan, and the agio) is a very disagreeable one - banquier. When I go to his room for dictation, he repeats to me Schiller's fine saying that the only approach toward the public which one need not regret is the warlike one; he also mentions Goethe's joking redress against conceited poetasters - to regard them from the point of view of natural history.
At lunch and also over coffee R. is out of humor and seems to me to be ill. A lampoon addressed to him - "To the pseudo-poet R. Wagner" - he does not read, but he is annoyed by a renewed request to sign a petition against the Jews addressed to Prince Bismarck. He reads aloud the ridiculously servile phrases and the dubiously expressed concern: "And I am supposed to sign that!" he exclaims. He writes to Dr. Forster, saying that in view of what happened to the petition regarding vivisection he has resolved never again to sign a petition.
Arrival of the Swiss painter, M. de Pury; R. sits for him for a quarter of an hour; when he professes to find a resemblance in the chin between R. and Nap. I, R. says, "De menton, nous sommes tous deux des menteurs" ["The chin, we are both of us liars"]. [Wagner's remark obliterated in ink by an unknown hand.] Walk to the palm tree, R. and I.
In the evening much talk with Herr von Stein about the B. Blatter; the conciliatory tone which some of the members would now like to see adopted annoys R., who would like to have much more criticism in it, reviews of performances, plays, etc., instead of "a lot of drivel." Then he talks about Goethe and Schiller, the miseries the latter had to endure in Jena and how long it took Goethe to summon him to Weimar: "Always just a matter of 200 to 300 thalers." Then he laughs heartily about the Goethe-Meyer classification of painters: Correggio, Raphael, M[ichel]angelo, G. Romano: "What business is it of his, and what is the point of it?"