it.  Concerts in Paris nearly brought utter ruin—­would have brought utter ruin had not a woman friend and admirer come to the rescue.  He gained no money by his concert tour until, as he said, he got to St. Petersburg, and there the amount cannot have been stupendous.  He laboured with brain, heart and hand to give the world masterpieces; the world responded by not responding at all—­by taking absolutely no notice.  In Paris he made many valuable friends, but they were useless to him for the realisation of his projects.  They might help him from moment to moment, and did help him to remain alive and to avert calamities:  a secure and peaceful living they could not guarantee him:  they could not assist him in getting his works properly performed, or performed at all.  I have already discussed the mistaken policy, on his part, of writing so much about himself, and the futility of his German friends taking up the pen on his behalf.  The friends meant well, and there was nothing else they could do; but at the time their efforts resulted in nothing.  He published the words of the Mastersingers and of the Ring, and the consequence was only that a professor publicly implored him not to set such a monstrosity as the second to music.  It is hard to say who did him the greatest amount of harm—­his French friends, his German friends, or his enemies on either side of wherever the frontier was in those far-off days.  Whatever was done for him, whatever he did for himself, whatever was done against him, it seemed all one:  he walked steadily on into the thickest of grimy fogs.  By romping over Europe like any itinerant conductor of this day, he might earn an uncertain livelihood:  as for any prospect of getting on with his Mastersingers, his Ring and a score of other plans bubbling in his head, that was a receding prospect indeed:  every year, every month, made the prospect still more remote.  His music was either misunderstood or disliked:  certainly the man’s writings and the writings of his friends resulted in him being disliked.  When he settled in Vienna after the triumphs of his earlier operas he speedily discovered this sad truth, but did not discover the reason why.  His life had been a long tragedy, and with this collapse of his Vienna hopes he seemed to touch the lowest depths.

So he got away from Vienna, and one day had a visitor.  This gentleman said, in effect, that King Ludwig II had just ascended the throne, and would be glad of a call.  Instantly the grimy fog cleared away; all was splendid sunshine:  in that sunshine Richard was henceforth to bask and the fruits of his genius were to ripen.  He went to Munich, and there were prompt results.  In 1865 Tristan was (at last) produced; he was enabled to make a new start on the Mastersingers, which was eventually produced in Munich in 1868.  But in Munich, as elsewhere, the inevitable occurred.  Wagner suddenly became the “favourite,” quite as in mediaeval