Sunday, April 16:
Following a good night, delight in Venice, our curious apartments please us, and a walk he takes to San Marco around midday utterly enchants him; we are in no doubt that this is the loveliest place of all. Just one incident annoys him: the son of the American impresario Strakosch asks him how much he earns from the performance of his works, whereupon R. rebukes him severely for his impertinence. "If only I could say such things with biting coldness, but I always get emotionally upset, and I felt my spasm again." In the afternoon we return to the square and go into the church, which R. was unwilling to enter in the morning, since a service was being held, then as far as S. Zaccaria, delighting in everything. The hotel, too, with its long anteroom on each floor, pleases R. In the evening he reads to us three acts of Gozzi's The Raven with enjoyment. When we are alone, we talk again about Sophocles; R. tells me various things from Ajax, regretting only the way maxims are bandied about, but full of admiration for its other qualities, and particularly for the vividness of Odysseus's character; he agrees with me in my praise for Philoctetes and the aftertaste of racial feeling in it.