Tuesday, October 10:
Today is the 10th, and I lay my little memento at R.’s feet, but without an inscription, indeed without even mentioning it. I cannot really explain it even to myself, but for me silence is becoming a necessity in joy as in sorrow! R. goes out around midday, returns home with a gift for Lusch, and gives me his card case; then I tell him that it is the 10th, and he remembers. Before going out he read the proof of Glasenapp’s chronicle, but decided not to publish it in the Bayreuther Blätter, since he intends to write about it himself.
At lunch we come to the subject of youth and old age; he quotes, “Qui de son age n'a pas l'esprit, de son age a tous les malheurs” [“He who has no feeling for his age has all the misfortunes of his age”], and when I add that an old woman should not behave like a young one, he replies emphatically, “And a young woman should not behave as an old one may not.” Over coffee he mentions a remark in the Bayreuther Tagblatt to the effect that present conditions are untenable and all that matters is to draw the right conclusions from the collapse; he is struck by the similarity to his own idea.
In the afternoon R. and I take a gondola to Saint Mark’s Square; since he has been cheated by the jeweler, he tells him so in very drastic words; the man refunds the money he paid for the trinket and we go to another, who, when he sees R.’s card, is beside himself with joy. R. then leaves me at the Palazzo Malipiero, where Siegfried and Eva come to fetch me at the very moment I am about to leave. The journey home with these two dear, good, sensible children is like a blessing on me - we three are Wahnfried, wandering abroad in foreign lands! At home I find R. reading, and I embrace him at the very hour I first set eyes on him! “That was an encounter which has proved its worth,” he says.
Herr Hausburg arrives to replace Stein with S. temporarily, until Glasenapp takes over. In the evening R. gets Rubinstein to play some fantasies by my father; one rhapsody he finds particularly pleasing, he says it is original, something newly minted which reflects my father’s individuality. He then tells us about a Herr von Glümer, whom he knew in Dresden in 1849, and who has now married a rich heiress, after having gone through much and spent years in prison. He is reminded by this that, when we left the Frari, a Herr Hampel introduced himself to us, saying he had been adjutant of the provisional government during those times, and R. had been particularly friendly toward him then; R. was completely silent, then said, “What right does that give you to address me now?” Later he told me, “He has lied about it so often to others that he now believes it himself.”