Friday, April 2:
For me this was previously always Saint Francis’s Day, now it just passes like all the others. The furniture moving continues, I help by beating and dusting the books.
After lunch I take a rest and read Lewes’s Life of Goethe. Then in the garden with the children and R. after his return from town. There he had found a delightful letter from a Comité Wagnerien, asking him for his permission to attend the first performance of Rienzi.
Late in the evening Richter arrives from Munich with news, much of which is amusing, but there are some unpleasant things, too. Lachner’s intrigues are still going on; and Hans has asked to be excused from conducting for several weeks. One miserable journalist completely dominates the Munich newspaper and denigrates everything that Hans does.
The news tortures me; it was a great consolation for me to know that Hans was contented. But life is not interested in consolation.