Sunday, June 19:
R. worn out by work, but very much more so by the impending production of Die Walküre. I force myself to keep silent about it. R. reads in the Illustrirte Zeitung that he had refused with grateful appreciation the flattering invitation to conduct the 9th Symphony; this annoys him a great deal, and he sends a correction to the Signale. Sunday—that is to say, much observed—walk with the children.
Visit from our bookseller Prell, who tells us some very curious stories—how, for example, he sold a set of the Brockhaus encyclopedia to a rich peasant, but the latter had to bring it back, on the command of his priest, as being anticlerical. “Yes,” says R., “our Liberal gentlemen do not go to the peasant and inquire what he is reading, they content themselves with boasting in the taverns.”
The great news of the household is that for the first time our hen pheasant is broody. R. yesterday intentionally crushed an insect pest with his foot and said that while doing so he had felt a physical shock through his whole body.