Frau Wille was another torment to Minna, but Frau Wesendonck was more.  Belart even implies that Minna grew so jealous of the Wesendonck that she poured out her woes to a dancing-master named Riese, who revered Meyerbeer.  When Minna, who was at least, says Mr. Finck, as well advanced as the eminent critics of the time, failed to understand the music of “The Walkuere,” when indeed she called it “immoral amorous asininity,”—­an opinion for which perhaps the duets with Frau Heim were partly responsible,—­Wagner used to slam on his hat and go for a walk, while Minna would seek Herr Riese.

The affair with the Frau Wesendonck is something of mystery, that is, if Wagner’s word is good for anything.  She died in 1902, and at her death Mr. Huneker summed up her affair with Wagner as follows: 

“Mathilde Wesendonck is dead.  Who was she?  Well, she was Isolde when Wagner was Tristan down on the beautiful shores of Zurich in the years of 1858 and 1859.  When he was in sore straits and had not where to lay his head, he went to Zuerich, and Mr. Wesendonck rented to him for next to nothing a little chalet.  There he dreamed out the second and third acts of ‘Tristan und Isolde,’ and succeeded in deeply interesting Mrs. Wesendonck in them.  There had already been trouble between him and his patient first wife, Minna, because of his attentions to this woman, and in 1856 the Wagners were on the point of a separation.  Richard wrote to his friend Praeger in London:  ’The devil is loose.  I shall leave Zuerich at once and come to you in Paris,’ But this time the trouble was smoothed over.

“In the summer of 1859 the attachment of Wagner and Mrs. Wesendonck had reached such a stage that Wesendonck practically kicked the great composer out of his paradise.  In later years, when questioned about it, Wesendonck admitted that he had forced Wagner to go.  In 1865 Wagner wrote to the injured husband: 

“’The incident that separated me from you about six years ago should be evaded; it has upset me and my life enough that you recognise me no longer and that I esteem myself less and less.  All this suffering should have earned your forgiveness, and it would have been beautiful and noble to have forgiven me; but it is useless to demand the impossible, and I was in the wrong.’

“It is thoroughly characteristic of Wagner to regard his sufferings as so much more important than those of the husband whom he wronged.  Wagner always thought well of himself.  But poor Isolde is dead at last.  She must have been very old and very sorry for the past.  Let the orchestra play the ‘Liebestod.’”

Judging from external evidences, there is reason enough to accept such a theory of the relations of Wagner and this sympathetic, beautiful woman.  In fact, it stretches credulity to the bursting point to accept any other opinion.  And yet, it is only fair to say that Wagner put a very different construction upon the friendship, and to confess that stranger things have happened in real life than the purely artistic wedlock, which Wagner claimed for the intimacy of the two.  Mathilde was a poet, and Wagner set to music some of her verses, notably his beautiful “Traume.”  Besides, she was the inspiration of his Isolde, and she gave him the sympathy Minna denied.