He recovered his reason, and was sent in February, 1898, for a voyage to Trieste and Venetia to complete his cure and prevent him from thinking of work.  The precaution was unnecessary; for he says in a letter to Hugo Faisst, written in the same month: 

“There is no need for you to trouble yourself or fear that I shall overdo things.  A real distaste for work has taken possession of me, and I believe I shall never write another note.  My unfinished opera has no more interest for me, and music altogether is hateful.  You see what my kind friends have done for me!  I cannot think how I shall be able to exist in this state....  Ah, happy Swabians! one may well envy you.  Greet your beautiful country for me, and be warmly greeted yourself by your unhappy and worn-out friend, Hugo Wolf.”

When he returned to Vienna, however, he seemed to be a little better, and had apparently regained his health and cheerfulness.  But to his own astonishment he had become, as he says in a letter to Faisst, a quiet, sedate, and silent man, who wished more and more to be alone.  He did not compose anything fresh, but revised his Michelangelo Lieder, and had them published.  He made plans for the winter, and rejoiced in the thought of passing it in the country near Gmunden, “in perfect quiet, undisturbed, and living only for art.”  In his last letter to Faisst, 17 September, 1898, he says: 

     “I am quite well again now, and have no more need of any cures.  You
     would need them more than I.”

Then came a fresh seizure of madness, and this time all was finished.

In the autumn of 1898 Wolf was taken to an asylum at Vienna.  At first he was able to receive a few visits and to enjoy a little music by playing duets with the director of the establishment, who was himself a musician and a great admirer of Wolf’s works.  He was even able in the spring to take a few walks out of doors with his friends and an attendant.  But he was beginning not to recognise things or people or even himself.  “Yes,” he would say, sighing, “if only I were Hugo Wolf!” From the middle of 1899 his malady grew rapidly worse, and general paralysis followed.  At the beginning of 1900 his speech was affected, and, finally, in August, 1901, all his body.  At the beginning of 1902 all hope was given up by the doctors; but his heart was still sound, and the unhappy man dragged out his life for another year.  He died on 16 February, 1903, of peripneumonia.

He was given a magnificent funeral, which was attended by all the people who had done nothing for him while he was alive.  The Austrian State, the town of Vienna, his native town Windischgratz, the Conservatoire that had expelled him, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde who had been so long unfriendly to his works, the Opera that had been closed to him, the singers that had scorned him, the critics that had scoffed at him—­they were all there.  They sang one of his saddest melodies, Resignation, a setting of a poem of Eichendorff’s, and a chorale by his old friend Bruckner, who had died several years before him.  His faithful friends, Faisst at the head of them, took care to have a monument erected to his memory near those of Beethoven and Schubert.