Friday, November 10:
Schiller's and Luther's birthday. Splendid autumn day, sunshine and gold. R. works busily; he hopes to have the second act finished soon. Letter from Karl von Gersdorff about setting up the Wagner Society in Berlin.
At lunch R. tells me of a remarkable bookbinder in Leipzig whom his uncle recommended to him; he always read the books he bound, so one could not get them back from him. "He was a sort of Hans Sachs," R. said, "and he fascinated me very much in my youth." R. maintains I am becoming more and more beautiful--I think myself already very old--and says when he sees me he is always terribly vexed not to be fifteen years younger.
Wrote to Marie M. Much out of doors; in the evening looked through the catalogue of Uhland's library with R. When we come to Luther, R. says, "The fellow was like me, had the writing itch, scribbled about everything." When I begged him at lunch to go out for a while and enjoy Nature, he replied with a laugh, "A composer is"--the sentence remained unfinished.