Saturday, December 16:
The night was a good one, R. is in good spirits, I try as much as possible to play down Eva’s illness. At lunch a lot of anecdotes are told about Cherubini and Spontini, among them how the former said to Hiller after having heard one of his symphonies, “On voit que vous n’avez rien de mieux à faire” [“One can see that you have nothing better to do”]. Spontini, R. says, was a monument of maliciousness. Of Mozart he said yesterday that one had only to compare him with his contemporaries to see what a cornucopia of ideas he was.
In the afternoon we go to the children’s salon, R. and I, and he then goes to rehearsal; the children go there, too, and return home in raptures, R. also pleased and excited: he recalls the performance 50 years ago, after only one rehearsal, and says the present one will be much better. Since I am not allowed to attend the rehearsals, I find it only a melancholy consolation that I cannot in any case leave Eva’s bedroom at present! The whist played again today arouses R.’s utter disgust! He complains that he and my father are now such strangers to each other. For quite a while he continues to talk aloud about this in his room, bursting into exclamations! I go to him, and this conversation, too, though a painful one for me, is peaceable! (Fidi wrote a hymn today, R. sat correcting it for him in the smoking niche, having gone there, first, because he had been dealt very bad cards, and then because my father played with such seriousness, not allowing himself to be distracted. I soon followed R. and left Loldi to take my place.)
When R. returned from the rehearsal I went to him from Eva’s room and found him, having already changed his clothes, reading Faust - the masquerade, which, out of context, gives him very great pleasure; he quotes to me Avarice’s speech and the old woman’s reply, “They’re troublesome enough” makes him laugh a lot.