How strange, in view of what happened later, that Von Buelow so planned his wedding trip that its main objective was a visit to Zurich in order that he might present Cosima to Wagner, who had not seen her since she had formed one of his audience at the “Rheingold” reading in Paris.  It is in a letter to his friend, Richard Pohl, written the day before his wedding, that Von Buelow mentions the “Wagnerstadt,” Zurich, as the aim of his wedding journey.  Was it Fate—­or fatality—­that led him thither with Cosima?  The daughter of Liszt, the bride of Von Buelow, being conducted on her honeymoon to the very lair of the great composer for whom she was, within a few years, to leave her husband!  What wonderful musical links destiny wove in the life of this woman who herself was not a musician!

Hans and Cosima arrived at Zurich early in September.  “For the last fortnight,” writes Von Buelow, under date of September 19, 1857, “I and my wife have been living in Wagner’s house, and I do not know anything else that could have afforded me such benefit, such refreshment as being together with this wonderful, unique man, whom one should worship as a god.”

On his side Wagner was charmed with the Von Buelows.  In one of his letters he speaks of their visit as his most delightful experience of the summer.  “They spent three weeks in our little house; I have rarely been so pleasantly and delightfully affected as by their informal visit.  In the mornings they had to keep quiet, for I was writing my ‘Tristan,’ of which I read them an act aloud every week.  If you knew Cosima, you would agree with me when I conclude that this young pair is wonderfully well mated.  With all their great intelligence and real artistic sympathy, there is something so light and buoyant in the two young people that one was obliged to feel perfectly at home with them.”

Wagner allowed them to depart only under promise that they would return next year, which they did, to find a household on the verge of disruption and to be unwilling witnesses to some of the closing scenes of Wagner’s first marriage.

During her childhood in Paris Cosima was frail and delicate.  Liszt, in one of his letters, confesses that this caused him to regard her with a deeper affection than he bestowed on her elder sister.  Later he speaks of her as a rare and beautiful nature of great and spontaneous charm.  A friend of Liszt’s who saw her at the Altenburg in 1860 writes that she was pale, slender, wan and thin to a degree, and that she crept through the room like a shadow.  Liszt was greatly concerned about her, for the year previous her brother Daniel had died of consumption, and he feared she might be stricken with the same malady.