Monday, December 9:
The trade association comes to R. to ask him to view its guildhall; we visit the interesting building with several of the masters, who take us around and offer us a second breakfast.
Following that, a visit to the stock exchange, whose dignified air strikes R. as very different from the exchanges in which Jewish traders predominate. Fine impression of the Town Hall chamber with its staircase.
A table d’hôte lunch, at which R. is cheered. We had added this day in order to get a Wagner Society started, but I very much fear we have not succeeded. Herr Reinthaler, who has monopolized us here and at the same time, so it seems to me, isolated us, is “an opponent,” as people express it, and his one worry is that on such an occasion he might be circumvented; he belongs to the clique of musical bigots.
In the evening we are taken to the Rathauskeller restaurant, and a little circle gathers there, once again with the Reinthalers at its head. It leaves me with a very unpleasant impression, and I am foolhardy enough to say so to R., who immediately agrees. The only consolation is that there were some young people there who will presumably take up the idea, carefully evaded by the head people, of a Wagner Society.
Thought a lot about the children, Freude, schöner Götterfunken!