Sunday, October 27:
To church with the children. The shallowness and dryness of the sermon, given by some vicar or other, does not hinder the feelings of devoutness aroused in me by the mere sight of the Redeemer on the cross. Oh, how sinful I know myself to be, and how just is every trial!
Yesterday Frau Kastner told me a curious thing: she had gone into a Jewish shop and had reached agreement about a dress with the woman there, when the man came in and asked, “Your husband is working with Herr Wagner?” “Yes.” Whereupon he declared he could not sell her the dress! He quoted some newspaper of Fritzsch’s; observed, “Now one is gathering the fruits, having let the Wagnerian mischief grow so long unchecked.” I should like to know what more the good people could have done!
In the afternoon I write letters to Claire, Vreneli, Kahnt, etc. I answer a nice letter from K. v. Gersdorff, who among other things remarks that at a funeral the conception of Judaism in music had become very clear to him: after the sermon which followed the hymn Jesus meine Zuversicht, there suddenly came the sounds of Mendelssohn’s Er ist bestimmt in Gottes Rat; at first he had ascribed the effect to the acoustics, but eventually was forced to believe in the reality of this piece of insipidity.
In the evening R. reads me passages from the statutes of the Council of Ten; he has recently acquired Daru’s history of Venice.