Wednesday, March 9:
India again in the morning, and in particular the little play. After lunch I have an anecdote about the teacher Gutmann with which to amuse R.: the former did not wish to continue going with Fidi to the Latin lesson, because the Latin teacher recently gave out the following sentence to be translated: 'Among the Romans the boys were taught by slaves' - otherwise he is polite and friendly toward him.
At lunch R. speaks gaily about jealousy, and says he makes a solemn oath never to have anything to do with another woman! Much about the Boers; the English are giving in here and there. Bad weather, R. does not go out; when he wants to join me, he finds me giving a lesson to the girls (French history) and laughingly calls me Aspasia!
In the evening we go through the 3rd act of Tannhäuser, which moves me like something from the Scriptures. R. is particularly pleased with the 'Prayer' and its utter simplicity, and that, so young and poorly equipped technically as he had been at that time, he had nevertheless had the self-assurance to keep this long piece so free of ornament.
We talk about his present work; the fact that he found the swelling trombones in his book is helping him to compose his additional music: 'But if you imagine I write a single bar without thinking of you, of your Catholic look, may the curse of ultimate Hell fall on you!' he says as we go upstairs. And as he is undressing, he thinks with pleasure of the King: all the other works are to a certain extent conventional, but this one dwells in the forest, and he ends with a reflection on the German peoples, who never again succeeded in evoking anything from that source.