Tuesday, June 7:
“How much has faded from my life!” R. says. “When I think of Zurich, where I spent 9 years, and nothing of it remains; I performed the Beethoven symphonies there, it is all forgotten, so we are quits.” Lindner, the engraver, arrives, and we begin our work; almost everything in his copperplate has to be altered, but I hope it will turn out well; the man himself, a peasant’s son, appeals to us for the simple integrity of his nature.
Yesterday, to the children’s great delight, an Italian boy came, bringing a marmot. R. spoke with him a little in Italian: “What it does to one to hear a boy like that saying Sì, signor, the nobility, the sadness of it! One thinks of ‘Mignon,’ ‘Kennst du das Land,’ and it brings tears to one’s eyes.” In the evening we start on Wilhelm Meister, unfortunately without much satisfaction from the first book. Letter to R. from the King; for myself a letter from Councilor Pusinelli, which pleases me.