Friday, November 11:
Lovely sunshine, cheerful breakfast. Work for R.; he is pleased to have overcome a bad passage at the end of the third act. In the evening, as he is writing his second page, he recalls the irrational way in which Berlioz at times introduced his instruments, and he is glad to have smoothed out this passage successfully.
After lessons we - the children and I - go for a walk, as does R. for half an hour or so. After lunch we, he and I, take a lovely drive to the Villa Giulia, delighting in all the blooming vegetation; R. is pleased by a palm tree, its hanging leaves laden with fruit, also by large red blossoms which look to him like butterflies; sea and mountains give delight. There were no errors of diet today, and in the morning he talked about the wretchedness of strong desire.
In the evening the fourth act of Henry VI and then, brought about by a chance quotation of “Believe me,” etc., the first scene between Faust and Mephisto, to our renewed admiration. “Only a German could have written that!” R. exclaims, and at Faust’s words “So to the actively eternal,” etc., he stops, to allow us properly to appreciate their greatness and splendor. Whereas in the later conversation the “Then let thyself be taught, say I! Go, league thyself with a poet” seems to him artificial, constructed, and it displeases him. The fine freedom of the verses especially pleases him, such as “In names like Beelzebub, Destroyer, Father of Lies,” which should be read quickly, he feels.