Tuesday, December 24:
R. had a bad night, but an absurd dream amuses him: his niece Johanna wanted to sing Brünnhilde, but she could not, and she draped herself in a long robe made of our bedroom curtain material, trying to compensate for her inadequate singing with striking gestures, and looking all the time at R.
Christmas activities. R. says at lunch that he had yet another dream, that “the Robber” (one of the fiddlers who played for the elder girls’ dancing lesson in the morning; the second fiddler the children called “the Little Doll”) was playing something from Parsifal downstairs. R. does not look too worn out at lunch, and in the evening, after the distribution of presents, he is in very high spirits; he tells me that in the palace gardens Jager fell down in the snow; he was taken to Stutzer’s tavern and Schnappauf was sent for, but it was nothing, and afterward Wolz., Seidl, Jager, Rubinstein, and he formed a Serapion Pact. We go to bed early, R. observing that yesterday’s reading about the death of Hoffmann had not been a good preparation for the previous night. But he is looking well. The Christmas tree is pushed to one side and the children clear away their things, for there is to be a party in Wahnfried tomorrow evening.