Thursday, February 23:
Spring! In the morning R. tells me that he has thought out his "petition" to the King of Bavaria on the building of our theater.
He calls me his "angelic etching," of whom he can never see enough! I am sad, as always when his love overwhelms me. He asks me to write to Councilor Duflipp in his name, which I do.
He continues with his march; recently he asked me about a turn in it and approved my choice, a matter of the greatest pride for me, and yet I must always and ever say to myself, "Know not what he finds in me."
In the afternoon I read the chapters of Carlyle which R. had skipped, and find to my great delight a reference to the opera house in Bayreuth. I tell R. when I walk to meet him in the evening.
Returning home, saluting our house, R. says, "We are altogether too happy, and there's nothing more to be said." I tell him then that, when in the morning I was running up and down the hill opposite with the children and was downright intoxicated by the spring landscape, with the cowherd yodeling in the distance, I thought with melancholy of the time when we should have to leave this place. The song "So fare thee well, thou silent house" came into my mind.
"We must make an inscription when we leave," I say, whereupon R.: "So fare thee well, thou dear Am Rhyn, and servants of thy habitation; we go, ne'er to return agin; this our only consolation!"
In the evening, Carlyle; we much enjoy the chapter on Friedrich Wilhelm I.
Evil doings in Russia, which we discuss at table: a conspiracy against the Emperor, because he is sympathetic to the Germans.