Thursday, October 23:
R. had a good night, at any rate he got up only once, and he calms my worries about his cough, which disturbed him only in the morning, “when everything became active.” I cannot eat my breakfast, but he forbids any Ottilie, “after we have got past Ophelia.”
Around lunchtime he tells me that he has been reading Wolz.’s article with great pleasure; he really has something to say, and his way of dealing with the Jewish problem is new and very humane. It has given him the idea that the city of Leipzig, as the place of his birth, might perhaps be persuaded to make a substantial endowment for Bayreuth. Delight in Herr von Stein; discussion about the problems of socialism, our young friend hopes to see them solved in an amicable way, R. on the other hand feels there are bound to be convulsions.
The enclosed quotations from the newspaper (not found) show where we are heading, and the nation will collapse under the strain. “We are not being ruled wisely,” R. exclaims with a sigh! In the afternoon R. goes to Angermann’s with W. and St., but on his return says very little came of it, and on such occasions he always has to make jokes and talk about himself.
In the evening the last two acts of Coriolanus. The mail brought us a very fine letter from Frau Helmholtz about Eckert’s death, a touching one from Franziska Ritter, and one from the Catholic woman who asked me for Parsifal to give to a nun who teaches literature in a convent. I sent her Dr. Schemann’s articles.