nothing more from me than a decent excuse for declining this offer, and suggested my pleading ’bodily and mental depression.’  My friend told me afterwards that the Duke had desired my co-operation with him in his score on account of my skilful use of trombones.  When he inquired, through Liszt, what my rules for their manipulation were, I replied that before I could write anything for trombones I required first to have some ideas in my head.

On the other hand, however, I felt very much tempted to entertain the Weimar proposal.  Still weary from my exhausting labour on Oper und Drama, and worried by many things which had a depressing effect on my spirits, I seated myself for the first time for many months at my Hartel grand-piano, which had been rescued from the Dresden catastrophe, to see whether I could settle down to composing the music for my ponderous heroic drama.  In rapid outline I sketched the music for the Song of the Norns, or Daughters of the Rhine, which in this first draft was only roughly suggested.  But when I attempted to turn Brunhilda’s first address to Siegfried into song my courage failed me completely, for I could not help asking myself whether the singer had yet been born who was capable of vitalising this heroic female figure.  The idea of my niece Johanna occurred to me, whom, as a matter of fact, I had already destined for this rule when I was still in Dresden on account of her various personal charms.  She had now entered upon the career of prima donna at Hamburg, but, judging from all the reports I had received, and especially from the attitude towards me that she openly adopted in her letters to her family, I could only conclude that my modest hopes of enlisting her talents on my behalf were doomed to disappointment.  I was, moreover, confused by the fact that a second Dresden prima donna, Mme. Gentiluomo Spatzer, who had once enraptured Marschner with Donizetti’s dithyrambics, kept hovering perpetually before my mind as a possible substitute for Johanna.  At last, in a rage, I sprang up from the piano, and swore that I would write nothing more for these silly fastidious schoolgirls.  Whenever I saw any likelihood of being again brought into closer contact with the theatre I was filled with an indescribable disgust which, for the time being, I was unable to overcome.  It was some little consolation to discover that bodily ill-health might possibly be at the bottom of this mental disorder.  During the spring of this year I had been suffering from a curious rash, which spread over my whole body.  For this my doctor prescribed a course of sulphur-baths, to be taken regularly every morning.  Although the remedy excited my nerves so much that later on I was obliged to adopt radical measures for the restoration of my health, yet in the meantime the regular morning walk to the town and back, surrounded by the fresh green and early spring flowers of May, acted as a cheerful stimulant on my mental condition.  I now