Thursday, October 24:
Visit to the Feustels, who are celebrating their silver wedding today. R. has arranged something from Venti for them and given them his portrait, painted by Bernhardt, a painter who is popular here, but he has not accepted the invitation to the family celebration.
I receive from my father a French book, Barbares et bandits, stuffed full of French idiocies.
With R. and Fidi to the tailor: “Measure the young gentleman for some trousers.” Fidi very cleverly chooses the materials for himself; much joy in him and, indeed, in all the children, who yesterday evening made a fine chariot, with Fidi as the driver.
Visit from the dean, discussion about my conversion. I am to attend Holy Communion next Thursday; solemn, introspective mood, feelings of remorse, inner atonement. All the evil that has befallen me and can still befall me acknowledged no longer simply as a just, but with all my heart as a mild, punishment. Prayed for Hans from the depths of my soul; a silent prayer to be permitted to stand by R. in truth.
In the evening we read Goethe’s Palaeophron und Neoterpe, since we had read in the Weimarer Zeitung that it is to be performed on the 400th anniversary of L. Cranach’s birth. The humorous verses please us very much, and R. says I am Neoterpe and he Palaeophron.