Friday, October 21:
We get up late, since R. had a somewhat restless night. In the course of the day he confesses to me that when he awoke, he wondered where he was, and the thought of the Nile journey suddenly seemed like madness, let alone writing his third act there. He reads W. v. Humboldt and writes several letters, also discusses the Neumann affair with friend Gross and remains unconcerned. The Fliegende Blatter and the Illustrierte Zeitung help to distract R., and he shows us an old portrait of Luther done on leather, and, most important, an illustration of dogs, in which he is quite charmed by the pinscher.
We go for a drive to Drossenfeld and then go to see Steingraber about the instruments which are to accompany the bells. We also go to the tailor's for Fidi. Back home, R. drafts the telegram to my father and asks me what I think of it. I tell him I would not alter a word. "In such a frame of mind, though, things can easily be misunderstood." "That does not matter, since it comes from you!"
He then plays two games of billiards with Stein, in very cheerful spirits, but they prove a strain on him, and he listens to the news from Rome, Rub.'s letter about Palermo, with some disquiet. After lunch he plays another game of billiards, but somewhat later, after he has had a rest. We read Feustel's speech, so full of sanctimonious rhetoric. The observations on the Irish question in particular make R. very angry. When a people has been brought to this state, he says, to reproach it then with a lack of diligence...!
In the evening R. looks in La Vestale for the passage to which my father drew his attention: the smiths in Il Barbiere. He finds it, and we have occasion to admire Rossini's much greater skill in handling it, using it in a comic situation. And, proceeding from the dogs, he comments on the professors' faces, saying they look like "oxidized bulls"!