Sunday, January 15:
Games with the children all day. I reply to Frau Wille, who wrote to me yesterday and who had heard in Zurich about the morning music; I find it very difficult to touch on this theme, even to the best of mortals. Then a letter to my mother, still up in arms!
Richter brings me his arrangement of the "staircase music"; it is excellently done. The three of us play it, Richter violin. At lunch R. tells us the story of a Prussian soldier, a tailor, who prepared a mitrailleuse and dummy and frightened the French with it.
In the afternoon I perform theatricals with Lusch for the little ones, after Richter had utterly charmed us with an improvised accompaniment to Lully's Armenian Sonata; earnestly, discreetly, minutely he accompanied the child who, feeling important, sat and played with intense solemnity. R. said Richter had given us a consummate portrait of true chamber music. In the evening Gibbon.