Thursday, October 5:
R. slept well. At breakfast I tell him stories about the children, which he enjoys hearing; I learned about them yesterday evening. In the morning he reads Calderon, but still without enjoyment. Then he writes to Herr Winkelmann. After lunch he goes out with Siegfried and me, first of all to Lavena’s and then to Muntzer’s bookshop, where he orders W. Scott. In the evening he plays whist, after the Strecker-Lucca affair has coaxed him into still further explanations.
During the whist various operas are discussed - La Juive, for example, always having an edge - and at the end he sings several things from Kienti in that splendid way of his which no singer can imitate.