Saturday, May 13:
Affectionate parting from the dear people with whom we have felt so much at home. I pack once more for R., and he says it is like a dream, the way I scold him for his untidiness; it makes him feel so good, and everyone is amazed how well he looks.
Booked tickets for Darmstadt, the joy of being alone together in the carriage. We talk about old times; R. says he does not wish to think of them, for we had been separated then, a wild and desolate dream! Delight in Thuringia, but melancholy feelings while passing Weimar; my father is there and I am not seeing him.
At 8 o’clock in Frankfurt, went for a walk, thought of Schopenhauer, also of the day, August 1862, when I expressed to R. my willingness to sit in a wheelbarrow if he would push it, as he proposed in the Schwanplatz. Arrived at the Traube in Darmstadt at 10 o’clock, drank some punch, and went to bed.
Sunday, May 14: Slept well, awoke in good spirits. At 10 o’clock the machinist Brandt, with whom R. discusses the arrangements for our future stage. During this I write to Richter, who from Vienna tells us of the rumor that royalty payments for Lohengrin and Tannhäuser have now been secured after all. God knows whether this is true; I had instructed Richter to tell my father of the behavior of Prince Hohenlohe.
After lunch promenaded in the Court gardens, then continued the rail journey to Heidelberg. Lovely evening, saw the ruins in the splendor of a sunset, walked in the garden, had dinner on the terrace, then wandered home along the leafy garden paths in excellent spirits.
R. has already been here; I ask him why he had never talked about it. He said it had been such a dismal time, he had walked here with Minna; it should not be difficult for me to imagine how distracted and indifferent his feelings.
Reaching our street, we are on the point of going to look at the Neckar Bridge again when loud laughter coming from the square reminds me of the Kasperl theater I had noticed in passing during the day. I ask R. whether we should not visit it, and, since he assented, we had an evening of the most splendid entertainment. We stood there rooted to the spot till past 10 o’clock and drew veritable consolation from the various ideas and fancies; the folk wit of the Germans is still alive.
Particularly delicious was the rapport between the audience, mainly little boys, and Kasperl; they talked to each other, and the smallest of the children joined in the action. Richard gave the woman with the collection box a florin, and that may well have spurred the man on, for he worked untiringly until at last Kasperl came on in a herald’s cloak and said the show was at an end. Why? Because the lights were being “spat out.”
Going to bed, we agree that this evening with our walk and the Kasperl was the nicest moment of our whole journey.