Sunday, February 5:
Letter from E. Ollivier, very elegiac; we are both of the opinion that he cannot be exonerated. Whatever he did, he should not have allowed himself to be dragged along by Gramont and advocate war against his original convictions.
Yesterday a cheerful and entertaining letter arrived from Cornelius; among other things he tells us that the old woman in the porter's lodge at the Court theater is still shouting in the corridors after the conductor, Wullner, "You, where are you going?" This critical view of the conditions there amused us vastly.
Plump Fidi is becoming a veritable Hercules! Yesterday, when I read the children the story of Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, we were all in tears, and R. pointed out Charles of Anjou to us as a typical example of French cruelty and lack of generosity: "Only the Germans behaved well." Loulou said she would have had the popes "tortured in the cruelest possible way" for their behavior toward Germany, and Loldi wanted to "beat them soundly" with Richter's help.
R. completes his Siegfried today; I am beside him as he writes the last notes! This is the day's happening which fills me with rapture.
Our conversation over beer brings us to the Eroica and the celebrated dissonance, which R. detests, because he cannot bear any form of eccentricity for its own sake; here it does not intensify the expression of the thought, but harms it, distracts from it.