Monday, November 24:
R. is sleeping well, in spite of not going outdoors; in his reading he stays with Herr Weber, despite not liking the diamond digging. News from Naples that our house there is princely, paradisaical, comfortable.
In the evening a letter from Herr Levi: nothing will come of Tannhäuser in Munich unless R. writes to Baron Perfall; swift decision, then let it rest.
At supper R. remarks how little his teachers meant to him, apart from a few whom he named, among them Magister Sillig, who once asked for the causes of the Thirty Years' War. Differences in religious beliefs was the first answer, but then R. suddenly stood up and said, without really knowing why, 'The jealousy of the princes.' He had in fact never given it any thought, but the teacher was very pleased.
Herr v. Stein reads to us the translation he has made of Aeschylus's chorus, and it seems to us very good. 'That is religion,' R. exclaims. We then take up our noble Don Quixote again, with ever-growing admiration and delight.
R., who felt yesterday that I showed too much concern over an indisposition of Herr V. Stein's, tells me that I do not know what men are like; he himself has a low opinion of them all. That leads us to Othello - 'I like that not' - which seems to us so much more powerful than 'Es gefällt mir nicht.'