Tuesday, January 30:
R. had a tolerable night; the mail brings him a nice letter from the singer Winkelmann, which pleases him. He copies out his article and then goes for a walk by himself, since I still have a cold. He returns home much delighted with the sight of the lively lanes, and observes that it is better for him to go out without me, however silly that sounds, but he is ashamed of his attacks when he is with me, the need to walk so slowly. He is afraid of offending me with this remark, seeming unaware that the only thing which pleases me is what seems right to him! He has brought me a lovely coffee service, and he returned home in high spirits in anticipation of my surprise.
At lunch Jouk. argues heatedly against vaporetti [steamers]; R. replied that he could not feel such concern about them, since they have a place in our modern world, in which the Jew Guggenheim is also one of Venice's benefactors; and if one wished to preserve Venice in its old state, one would also have to put the old families back in the palaces! At coffeetime we receive a visit from the two friendly painters Passini and Ruben, but they make an arid impression on R. and produce from him the merriest jokes.
Otherwise he is in a subdued mood, as so often now in the hours of dusk; he regrets that our palace is so far from the Square, feels we have no luck with our arrangements (a statement he tries to take back at once, fearing that it will make me sad); he says this will probably be our last stay in Italy — in future we shall just make a long journey every year. He still thinks fondly of Naples (Villa d'Angri); recently he made the bold suggestion that Venice ought to be situated where Capri is — so that one could have the two of them combined! However, he says he will do anything which he can assume will please me.
In the evening he reads to us from the newspaper L'Italie an account of the situation in France. (Before that, at supper, a great disturbance was caused by the news that Herr Neumann is to bring the Ring to Venice after all, though R. specifically advised Count Contin against it. R. sends Neumann a very emphatic telegram of disapproval.) R. asks Lusch to play the piano with him, but unfortunately she behaves childishly and refuses. So R. plays by himself — first the Andante from the Fourth Symphony ("for us the Third," as he says), then "Froh, froh, wie seine Sonnen" from the Ninth.
He once again points out how significant it is that Beethoven put into his symphonies none of the sentimentality so much in evidence in his sonatas and quartets. He says they are like great epics, dramas. In the sonatas, etc., he made music himself; in the symphonies the world made music through him. R. enlarges upon the stupidity of his successors, who then introduced this kind of sentimentality. At the end of the evening he tells me that he can still imagine a type of symphonic work, like the Kaisermarsch, for example, in which themes are not contrasted but each emerges out of another. However, he says he will make no more music — it excited him too much. (Delight in Fidi, who is now looking splendid.)
The description of the King's castle in L'Italie annoys R., making him feel ashamed of the whole relationship. He regrets that Rothschild did not make Vienna a gift of a million [the last twenty-one words obliterated in ink by an unknown hand].