As the management placed a very small number of free seats at my disposal, money had to be found for the purchase of tickets.  In the pursuit of this object, which my friends were so warmly advocating and which involved much that was disagreeable, I shrank from approaching Emil Erlanger or anybody else.  Giacomelli, however, had found out that Aufmordt, the merchant, a business friend of Wesendonck, had offered to help to the extent of five hundred francs.  I now allowed these champions of my welfare to act according to their own ideas, and was curious to see what assistance I should derive from these resources which I had previously neglected and now utilised.

The second performance took place on the 18th of March, and, indeed, the first act promised well.  The overture was loudly applauded without a note of opposition.  Mme. Tedesco, who had eventually been completely won over to her part of Venus by a wig powdered with gold dust, called out triumphantly to me in the manager’s box, when the ‘septuor’ of the finale of the first act was again vigorously applauded, that everything was now all right and that we had won the victory.  But when shrill whistling was suddenly heard in the second act, Royer the manager turned to me with an air of complete resignation and said, ’Ce sont les Jockeys; nous sommes perdus.’  Apparently at the bidding of the Emperor, extensive negotiations had been entered into with these members of the Jockey Club as to the fate of my opera.  They had been requested to allow three performances to take place, after which they had been promised that it should be so curtailed as to admit of its presentation only as a curtain-raiser to introduce a ballet which was to follow.  But these gentlemen had not agreed to the terms.  In the first place, my attitude during the first performance (which had been such a bone of contention) had been observed to be utterly unlike that of a man who would consent to the proposed line of conduct; this being so, it was to be feared that if two more performances were allowed to take place without interruption, we might hope to win so many adherents that the friends of the ballet would be treated to repetitions of this work thirty times running.  To guard against this they determined to protest in time.  The fact that these gentlemen meant business was now realised by the excellent M. Royer; and from that time he gave up all attempt to resist them, in spite of the support granted to our party by the Emperor and his Consort, who stoically kept their seats through the uproars of their own courtiers.

The impression made by this scene had a disastrous effect upon my friends.  After the performance Bulow broke out into sobs as he embraced Minna, who had not been spared the insults of those next to her when they recognised her as the wife of the composer.  Our trusty servant Therese, a Swabian girl, had been sneered at by a crazy hooligan, but when she realised that he understood German, she succeeded in quieting him for a time by calling him Schweinhund at the top of her voice.  Poor Kietz was struck dumb with disappointment, and Chandon’s ‘Fleur du Jardin’ was growing sour in the storeroom.