Friday, June 24:
Very thundery day, but we can work in the garden in the morning; I write to Prof. Nietzsche (yesterday I wrote to Marie Muchanoff in Weimar). Just as I am about to bathe Fidi there comes thunder, hail, rain, hurricane. From town comes a letter from Franz Müller in Munich; he emphatically reports the enthusiasm of all for Die Walküre! Die W. is to be given there on Sunday, then three times in succession Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. “It really is wonderful,” R. says bitterly. “Perfall as manager, Wüllner as conductor, Grandaur as producer, Müller as historian, and only then the King of Bavaria and my work.” It pierces my heart like a dagger, and I ask myself whether this disgraceful act will really go unavenged? Shortly beforehand R. had said to me, “You are the King of Bavaria’s sister, you have joined hands to save my life—he, it is true, as a foolish character, you as a good woman.” I cannot make out the King’s feelings—though, as an Indian proverb says, this one can never do with kings anywhere. As I write this, Fidi is sitting at my side, a bird is sitting on the catalpa tree, and they are babbling together. Our ray of sunshine, we call Fidi.
The evening shows the melancholy effects of that stupid letter: R. so beside himself and also so physically worn out that I stand there disconsolate, not knowing what to do. He gradually calms down outwardly. We read W. Meister, but in dissatisfaction give up reading at the point of Mignon’s death. Incomprehensible that Natalie, in telling him the fate of the child, does not at the same time tell him to live now only for the children, to take Mignon to Italy and grant her at least a gentle death, and only later to seek out his friends and start on the course of study, in which he in any case behaves stupidly enough.