Saturday, April 29:
A good night, nice weather, packing. R. goes out around noon, and tells me he went to visit K. Ritter, whose address he came upon by chance in the bookshop; given at first a wrong direction on the Riva, he sees a gray-haired gentleman at the window, asks himself, “Has Karl really altered so much?” Then, led into a room in which a lot of pictures are standing, he again asks himself, “Does he paint, too?” At last he sees his mistake, makes further inquiries, and comes to the right door, where a woman with a baby in her arms tells him that Herr Ritter is not at home; whereupon R.: “I think he is at home.” The woman, embarrassed, asks if he is indeed Herr Wagner. “Yes, I am,” R. says, writes on a scrap of paper, “What sort of a person are you?” and goes away. All the same, he is greatly upset by this experience; even before it, the feeling that he would have to take K. R. more or less by surprise in order to see him had brought on a prolonged chest spasm. We also learn that our old friend Gersdorff is here and has not visited us! We leave the hotel at one o’clock, accompanied by the singers, a sight which draws people onto all the bridges, and we leave Venice, after having once again inspected the entresol of the P. Vendramin. We greet Verona and much else, and arrive unnoticed on