eye and kindliness of manner, which was well calculated to exert an attractive influence.  I felt almost flattered by his ready acceptance of my invitation to my informal evening parties, which may, perhaps, have been fairly agreeable gatherings, as Bulow entertained us with music, though to me personally they afforded no mental sustenance whatever.  My wife used to declare that, when I proceeded to read from my manuscript, Kolatschek promptly fell asleep, while Herwegh gave all his attention to her punch.  When, later on, as I have already mentioned, I read my Oper und Drama for twelve consecutive evenings to our Zurich friends, Herwegh stayed away, because he did not wish to mix with those for whom such things had not been written.  Yet my intercourse with him became gradually more cordial.  Not only did I respect his poetical talent, which had recently gained recognition, but I also learned to realise the delicate and refined qualities of his richly cultivated intellect, and in course of time learned that Herwegh, on his side, was beginning to covet my society.  My steady pursuit of those deeper and more serious interests which so passionately engrossed me seemed to arouse him to an ennobling sympathy, even for those topics which, since his sudden leap into poetic fame, had been, greatly to his prejudice, smothered under mere showy and trivial mannerisms, altogether alien to his original nature.  Possibly this process was accelerated by the growing difficulties of his position, which he had hitherto regarded as demanding a certain amount of outward show.  In short, he was the first man in whom I met with a sensitive and sympathetic comprehension of my most daring schemes and opinions, and I soon felt compelled to believe his assertion that he occupied himself solely with my ideas, into which, certainly, no other man entered so profoundly as he did.

This familiarity with Herwegh, in which an element of affection was certainly mingled, was further stimulated by news which reached me respecting a new dramatic poem which I had sketched out for the coining spring.  Liszt’s preparations in the late summer of the previous year for the production in Weimar of my Lohengrin had met with more success than, with such limited resources, had hitherto seemed possible.  This result could naturally only have been obtained by the zeal of a friend endowed with such rich and varied gifts as Liszt.  Though it was beyond his power to attract quickly to the Weimar stage such singers as Lohengrin demanded, and he had been compelled on many points to content himself with merely suggesting what was intended to be represented, yet he was now endeavouring by sundry ingenious methods to make these suggestions clearly comprehensible.  First of all, he prepared a detailed account of the production of Lohengrin.  Seldom has a written description of a work of art won for it such attentive friends, and commanded their enthusiastic appreciation from the outset, as did this treatise of Liszt’s,