At last she came, and he wrote Heine a letter of rejoicing.  But once with him, she began again her opposition to his high-flying theories.  She wanted him to write a popular French opera for Paris.  She was humiliated at his borrowing for his self-support, and could not see much glory in his creed:  “He who helps me only helps my art through me, and the sacred cause for which I am fighting.”  He seemed more than afraid of her opinion, and wrote to Uhlig: 

“She is really somewhat hectoring in this matter, and I shall no doubt have a hard tussle with her practical sense if I tell her bluntly that I do not wish to write an opera for Paris.  True, she would shake her head and accept that decision, too, were it not so closely related to our means of subsistence; there lies the critical knot, which it will be painful to cut.  Already my wife is ashamed of our presence in Zurich, and thinks we ought to make everybody believe that we are in Paris.”

At last, she nagged him into her theory, although he fairly loathed writing a pot-boiler, and considered it the purest dishonesty.  He went to Paris, but returned, having been able to accomplish nothing.  On his return, he wrote in his “A Communication to My Friends,” that a new hope sprung up within him.  His friend Liszt was then directing the opera at Weimar.

“At the close of my last Paris sojourn, when I was ill, unhappy, and in despair, my eye fell on the score of my ‘Lohengrin,’ which I had almost forgotten.  A pitiful feeling overcame me that these tones would never resound from the deathly pale paper; two words I wrote to Liszt, the answer to which was nothing else than the information that, as far as the resources of the Weimar Opera permitted, the most elaborate preparations were being made for the production of ‘Lohengrin.’”

It was in “Lohengrin” that he first put in play his theory of the marriage of poetry and music, his idea being their complete devotion, with poetry as the master of the situation.  He believed in independent melodies no more than in strong-minded wives.  He lived this artistic theory in his own domestic relations, and it was not his fault that Minna, his melody, found it impossible to live in the light upper air of his poetry.  He was so discouraged, however, by this time, by finding no encouragement at home, and a frenzy of hostility from the critics,—­a frenzy almost incredible at this late day, in spite of the monumental evidences of it,—­that for six years, after the completion of “Lohengrin,” he wrote no music at all.

He felt that he must first prepare the soil of battle with the critics in their own element—­ink-slinging.  On this fact Mr. Finck comments as follows: 

“Five years,—­nay, six years, six of the best years of his life, immediately following the completion of ’Lohengrin,’—­the greatest dramatic composer the world has ever seen did not write a note!  Do you realise what that means?  It means that the world lost two or three immortal operas, which he might have, and probably would have, written in these six years had not an unsympathetic world forced him into the role of an aggressive reformer and revolutionist.”