Sunday, June 26:
Kos very bad. “The way inanimate forces, chemical forces, fight over such a poor creature and destroy it truly demonstrates that life is just a condition, an agony,” R. says.
Toward noon Richter arrives, to our great delight; he did not attend the rehearsal of Die Walküre in Munich, which was very nice of him. R. is in good spirits, we talk of Bayreuth and forget about Munich! Fidi, our Monsieur Sunbeam. Letter from the publisher Lucca: Breitkopf und Härtel have the effrontery to claim the publishing rights for Italy. Punch in the evening with Richter, for whom things seem to be going very badly in Vienna. After he has gone to bed we read another chapter of W. Meister—“Mignon’s Exequies.”