Tuesday, October 9:
R. works and tells me in the evening that I should congratulate him, for he has found what he was looking for.
Serious orthopedic exercises under my supervision. R. is writing out Parsifal for the printers; he asks our mayor’s son, a budding professor of literature, to take on the task of copying. This young man was present at the reading, and R. assumed that he would enjoy the work. Curious hesitation: he has to take his doctoral examination, etc. R. immediately withdraws his request, questions him about what in fact he has to study - sentence not completed.
When he has gone, R. and I laugh, remarking that his father, the mayor, is a very different character. “Yes,” says R., “when a pin boy amounts to something, he becomes so happy and proud that he then brings a son like that into the world!” Hearty laughter over this (for it was as a pin boy that the mayor earned money for his studies).
In this connection I tell him how much I have always admired the generous naivete with which he assumes that people who are able to help him will do so willingly, whereas I am conscious of the usual ungenerous reluctance of people to take on obligations toward anybody. We talk about Hindu beggars, who become such in order to give others the pleasure of doing good.
Feelings of this kind, which are so often disappointed, must, however, be distinguished from the usual kind of dishonorable requests for favors. News of the death of E. Devrient. R.’s remark: “I have lost a false tooth.”