Thursday, March 16:
R. tells me he woke up in tears during the night; he had dreamed of the time when we had separated and he visited me and I seemed to him like a departed spirit. "Those were the saddest of times."
Jakob Sulzer says in his account of the Zurich affair that it was caused by hatred of the Germans. Letter from Constantin Frantz, who reproaches R. with belonging to the "National Liberals," and who is not prepared to "go along" with the German Empire. Thus the Germans: each has his own ideas.
Family lunch, Lusch not present. The whole countryside covered with snow; the poor starlings will starve! We do not go out.
R. drafts his poem; at first he thought of demanding 500 francs from the publisher for it, so as to have 2,000 francs for our journey, 1,500 for the March. But he does not want it to be tacked on; his ambition is for it to be taken for a folk song, and for that reason it should sound quite artless.
I come upon him at work; he is altering the words to fit the melody, and says: "Nothing worthwhile will come just from writing a good poem and then putting a melody to it. I can see how the irregularities of the Greek choruses arose; I also knew what I was doing when I constructed my Nibelungen meter, I knew it would accommodate itself to the music."
Regarding the folk song, I tell him there is nothing with which we can make money. At lunch he had also considered whether he could not send his march to the London exhibition, replacing Ein feste Burg with God Save the King. "That would mean 50 pounds, but it would spoil the March."
In the evening, Gibbon; Julian's death reminds me of the ridiculous way in which his life was taught to us at school; he was said to have died saying, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" I am also surprised that no writer has made him the hero of a tragedy.