Thursday, October 12:
Lusch’s birthday, celebrated in Venice for the second time. In the morning R. talks to me again about the Greci church, saying that it does not give any warm feelings of Christianity but, rather, an impression of stiffness and pomp, like a relic of ancient Assyria! Around 10 o’clock the presentation of gifts; at 11:30 R., Lusch, Siegfried, and I ride to Saint Mark’s Square, go into the church, visit the vestry, which pleases R. very much, particularly the inlaid work. As we leave the church he says, “The Crusaders certainly trod this floor before us.”
At lunch he asks Siegfried to propose the toast; when he shyly refuses, R. says very humorously that Lusch has not married because the family loves her so much that she does not wish to leave it; Field Marshal Moltke is completely in despair, and so on. Around 5 o’clock we go out, in the worst weather! R. is very cross about it; and when we are told in the evening that this persistent rain is bound to lead to an outbreak of fever, I am also filled with concern. This is dispelled by Götterdämmerung, from which Herr Rubinstein plays us “Siegfried’s Journey” (following which R. sings “Hagen’s Watch”) and the conclusion. “How perceive it, how to leave it, all this rapture” . . . R. jokes about the way people never want anything but Isolde’s apotheosis - and Die Walküre (with the false stress) - that is to say, ist der Lenz! It is the women who want these, he says, the men do not count.
“I wish for Katharina von Bora,” says R. in connection with the weather - in other words, a north wind. We laugh at his joke, but the weather really is desperately bad. Today R. says about S., “He is a penetrating boy - when one looks long at him, he looks back at one in the same way.” When he was riding with me in the gondola today, he told me he was still toying with the idea of asking the King of Bavaria to show him no more favors; the news that the King is also having a deer park laid out in the style of Louis XV at his newly built castle has truly appalled R.! The news about the plays the King is having performed for his own amusement also has a painful effect.
At breakfast R. thought with mild regret of that time in Zurich when Minna had her heart ailment and people were forbidden to excite her. “It was difficult for me,” he says, “since she took advantage of my consideration for her condition to become malicious.” We are informed that these floods bring a virulent fever in their wake, which adds unutterably to my anxieties.