Tuesday, December 14:
R. did not have an utterly bad night, but he got out of bed. In the morning he tells me that the water dripping in the cistern made such a pleasant noise that it was just like listening to a piece by Chopin. At lunchtime he comes up to my room and tells me that at lunch he enlarges upon the difference between German and French punctuation.
Regarding Cervantes’s story, he says, “It is all there, but I have the feeling that these people were of a very special kind, and they appear in a particularly charming light.” At lunch he exclaims to the “Gobelin” weather, “Just carry on, don’t be shy,” which makes us all very merry about the inclemency of the weather. A book about him by Marsillach, translated into Italian, amuses him, and when, over coffee, we talk of his friends, he recalls Schuré and the fact that he has now lost touch with him. He tells of his passion for a Greek lady, and when I rectify his account by remarking that the attraction was mutual, he says, “Well, then, no wonder I got it so badly” — which makes us all laugh heartily.
We stroll around, he and I, in the salon and in the hall; he also does some work in the evening, and says he did something good today and is in exuberant mood, as always when satisfied with his work. From a “violently tender” embrace he goes over to the wildest of joking, which he explains to me thus: “Otherwise one would go mad.” Whereupon: “I’m gradually beginning to understand you.” He gets the idea of reading Parsifal and does so, as a parting gift for Stein. Afterward, as usual, he regrets it, but it proved quite easy for him, and though some somber remarks about his relations with his friends and with the world escape him, he is nevertheless in good spirits.
Giving me the newspaper report, he says: “What one desires in one’s youth, one gets in plenty in old age; if this performance had come to my notice when I was a conductor in Dresden, for instance, how excited I should have been! But how cold it leaves one now!” In the evening the moon shines brightly and illuminates the glass in our skylight. It pleases R., and it really does make Wahnfried look enchanted, since all day long not a glimmer of the sky was to be seen.