Monday, September 8:
R. did not have a very good night; he lacks exercise, and we decide on a drive, since the weather is glorious. R. orchestrates.
Over coffee he talks of the lack of freedom now discernible everywhere, causing, for example, his farce, Die Kapitulation, not to be understood at all. Aristophanes would not be understood at all. He says he feels like writing a comedy for the B. Blätter in which people would appear under their own names: L. Bucher, Forges, Rubinst., Wolz., my father - all of it guileless, but full of nonsense.
Drive to the Schlehenmühle, curious wrong turnings, a stop at the Bodenmühle, talk with the miller in which R. is struck by the word “Wagschaft.” Not far from the Bodenmühle we get back into the carriage, very tired.
In the evening we are alone, R. and I, which is a great blessing; R. working in his head, and he at last finds the alteration in the Prelude which he has long been looking for! He plays it to me. Then he reads me the story of the ring from Nathan. A portrait and eulogy of Moses Mendelssohn, with the description of his shallow optimism, leads him to shape the scene in a nice and cozy way, but it all seems a very superficial conception of religion. And R. laughs at the celerity with which the other participants in the argument are always won over. I misunderstood the whole thing at first and thought that the three rings were not genuine, the genuine one having vanished. R. says, “That would be a completely different thing.”