We had reached the month of November.  My relations had to go home, leaving me behind in a state of unconsciousness, in which I was consigned to the care of my friend Gasperini.  In my fits of fever I insisted on their calling in all imaginable medical aid, and, as a matter of fact, Count Hatzfeld did bring in the doctor attached to the Prussian embassy.  The injustice thus done to my friend, who took the greatest care of me, was due to no mistrust of him, but to feverish hallucinations which filled my brain with the most outrageous and luxuriant fancies.  In this condition, not only did I imagine that Princess Metternich and Mme. Kalergis were arranging a complete court for me, to which I invited the Emperor Napoleon, but I actually requested that Emil Erlanger should place a villa near Paris at my disposal, and that I should be removed to it, as it was impossible for me to recover in the dark hole where I was.  At last I insisted on being taken to Naples, where I promised myself a speedy recovery in free intercourse with Garibaldi.  Gasperini held bravely out against all this madness, and he and Minna had to use force in order to apply the necessary mustard-plasters to the soles of my feet.  During bad nights later on in life similar vain and extravagant fancies used to return to me, and on waking I have realised with horror that they were the offspring of that period of fever.  After five days we mastered the fever; but I seemed to be threatened with blindness, and my weakness was extreme.  At last the injury to my sight passed away, and after a few weeks I again trusted myself to steal along the few streets between my house and the Opera, to satisfy my anxiety for the continuation of the rehearsals.

People here had indulged in the oddest ideas, and seemed to have assumed that I was as good as dead.  I learned that the rehearsals had been needlessly suspended, and moreover gathered from one indication after another that the affair had practically collapsed, although in my intense desire for recovery I tried my utmost to conceal this from myself.  But I was much elated and pleased to see that the translation of the four operatic librettos which had so far appeared had been published.  I had written a very exhaustive preface to them addressed to M. Frederic Villot.  The translation of all this had been arranged for me by M. Challemel Lacour, a man with whom I had become acquainted at Herwegh’s house in days gone by when he was a political refugee.  He was a highly intelligent translator, and had now done me such admirable service that every one recognised the value of his work.  I had given J. J. Weber, the bookseller in Leipzig, the German original of the preface to publish under the title of Zukunftsmusik.  This pamphlet also reached me now, and pleased me, as it probably represented the only result of my whole Paris undertaking, which looked so brilliant on the surface.