Tuesday, February 15:
R. dreamed that he went walking with Goethe, conversed with him, and resolved to stay with him, “having found my mission in life in the company of such a man.” He goes to work in good spirits, I with the children. At lunch he tells me he has been looking at Käthchen von Heilbronn and tears had come into his eyes as he recalled my dreams that Loldi would probably turn into a sort of Käthchen. Yesterday he told me that when he was a child the most terrible things he could imagine were a permanent separation through travel and the incurable illness of a beloved being. He was often indulgent toward bad books or pictures when these themes were touched on. — In the afternoon a letter from Mme Ollivier, very friendly, I reply at once. (Yesterday in the middle of our walk R. suddenly sighed; he told me later he had been thinking of my pains during my confinement.) A telegram from Herbeck that Die Meistersinger is really to be done on Thursday and that the whole company is full of enthusiasm; they are expecting R. to be there. — R. laughs and asks what he would be without me and the children. Ever-increasing joy in Fidi, who is blooming. “I suppose you would like him to become a sort of Parzival!” I: “Yes.” In the evening I, too, looked through Käthchen von Heilbronn. When I remark to R. how strange it is that one is still so moved at the end, though one knows what is coming, R. replies that, since everything in it is musical, it is not surprise which counts, but fulfillment.