Sunday, September 30:
To church for the harvest festival. How much could be said in a few words to the poor people who come streaming in, and how little is offered them in long, flowery speeches!
R. works and tells me: "I was on the point of giving everything up today, picked up my Darwin, but then suddenly threw him down, for during my reading it all came to me, and I was then in such good spirits that I literally had to force myself to stop, so as not to keep lunch waiting. It is a mad state."
Yesterday we discovered, among the correspondents' reports in the musical journal Signale, an article by Hans about Il Barbiere di Siviglia, performed in Baden-Baden: this renewed sign of life moves me so much that I can scarcely read it! ... It is witty, but the wit does not raise my spirits.
In the evening R. takes up the Barbiere, finding Hans right to admire it so unconditionally. After that, Darwin.