Thursday, December 15:
R. tells me in the morning that I am looking transfigured today—maybe the arrival of this mild, thawing weather, which always relaxes me, is to blame. I dreamed that at table Voltaire and R. got into a quarrel about Albrecht Dürer. Coming back once more to Calderon, R. says he is at his best in his comedies; the tragedies captivate through the themes they deal with. Christmas preparations. Family lunch. Letter from my mother with the familiar injustices toward Prussia.
I go into town with R.; there we find a letter from Schuré, who writes very understandingly about Beethoven, but in French, so R. does not even read it. R. is writing another ending for his Beethoven. “One must not always butter the Germans up,” he says. In the evening began Gibbon. R. says he would like to be rich, move into an Italian villa with me, and there study in peace and at leisure. “I never read anything at all now, but to make up for it I live, I have you and the children.” Loulou writes to Luise Bülow, I to Hedwig.