Wednesday, March 30:
R. slept well, and he teases me about “the old Saxe.” This is because I noticed that a bowl from this china service had been brought into use, and I am said to have cried out piteously, “But the old Saxe!” - a remark which amuses R. enormously.
Unfortunately R. is not well, and the change in the weather gives him chest spasms. We go for a walk in the palace gardens but are not refreshed by it.
At lunch, talking of Count Gobineau’s book, R. remarks that distinguished Frenchmen seem able to understand all the peoples of the earth with the exception of the Germans. “We may not present ourselves well, but when the right man appears among us, we produce what are probably the only completely universal and unprejudiced minds.” He feels that even Carlyle is prejudiced in many ways. “But,” he says, “we do not present ourselves well, we are thoroughly unpleasant.”
In the evening he feels oppressed - a letter from the theater director in Cologne has brought him much vexation.
This evening’s page of the score (88) caused him a lot of trouble, he says. At lunch he told me that I would be pleased with the trumpet.