Tuesday, January 11:
“Well, what does that have to do with me?” I hear R. say during the night. I: “What?” “Corfu’s neutrality, of which I have just been dreaming.” He slept quite well, and at 12 o’clock settles down to his work, after writing to inquire what he owes for Molle.
At breakfast and also at lunch we talked about friend Feustel’s optimistic sophisms and also about Empress Augusta, who appears to have directed some malicious remarks at Lusch. R. says, “These creatures are such utter nobodies, they cannot even make people happy, for when they bring someone into their entourage, they then find it a bother, and all that’s left to them is to make malicious remarks.”
Over coffee we again talk about Gobineau’s stories, which R. finds very absorbing. In the palace gardens he tells me about the Chileans, who are now outside Lima.
In the evening R. jokes about a present I have given to Fidel, saying he wants to see the gold pencil, too, he is hoping to become Fidi’s heir. He expresses his happy feelings of certitude that nothing can happen to our children, and so foolish am I that, instead of being pleased, I am gripped by a kind of fear; I betray this only through a movement and an exclamation, but how unjust of me, how lacking in self-discipline, not simply to be pleased when he expresses pleasure!
I read “L’Illustre Magicien” aloud, and R. is much delighted by it even on hearing it a second time, particularly the scene in which the magician teaches Kassem wisdom and in which only the effect on Kassem is shown, then the first scene between Kassem and his wife and the return of the sister.
R. has taken a little notebook up to his dressing room, since, as he tells me, musical ideas always come to him while he is dressing. Letters from Lusch to her sisters entertain and delight us.