Karl Tausig had also sought me out, and was now devoting his energies to Vienna, with the express determination of conquering this field for Liszt’s compositions, and had opened his campaign there during the previous winter with a series of orchestral concerts, started and conducted by himself.  He introduced me to Peter Cornelius, who had also been drawn to Vienna, and whom I only knew from our meeting in Bale in 1853.  They both raved about the recently published pianoforte arrangement of Tristan, which Bulow had prepared.  In my room at the hotel, whither Tausig had transported a Bosendorff grand-piano, a musical orgy was soon in full swing.  They would have liked me to have started rehearsing Tristan at once; and, in any case, I was now so bent on securing the acceptance of the proposal that my work should first be performed here, that I finally quitted Vienna with a promise to return in a few months, in order to start the preliminary study at once.

I felt no little embarrassment at the prospect of communicating my change of plan to the Grand Duke, and therefore readily yielded to the impulse of only visiting Karlsruhe after a long detour.  As my birthday fell just at the time of this return journey, I resolved to celebrate it at Zurich.  I reached Winterthur, via Munich, without delay, and hoped to meet my friend Sulzer there.  Unfortunately he was away, and I only saw his wife, who had a pathetic interest for me, and also their little son, a lively and attractive boy.  Sulzer himself, I learned, was expected back the next day, the 22nd of the month, and I accordingly spent most of the day in a small room at the inn.  I had brought Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Wanderjahre with me, and now for the first time was enraptured by fuller comprehension of this wonderful production.  The spirit of the poet attracted me most profoundly to his work by the impression left on my mind by his lively description of the breaking-up of the players’ company, in which the action almost becomes a furious lyric.  Next morning at early dawn I returned to Zurich.  The wonderfully clear air decided me to try the long and circuitous path through the familiar haunts of the Sihlthal to Wesendonck’s estate.  Here I arrived quite unannounced; and when I inquired what the habits of the household were, I learned that about this time Wesendonck usually came down to his dining-room to breakfast alone.  There I accordingly seated myself in a corner, where I awaited the tall, good-tempered man, who, on entering quietly for his morning coffee, broke out into joyous astonishment on beholding me.  The day passed most sociably; Sulzer, Semper, Herwegh, and Gottfried Keller were all sent for, and I thoroughly enjoyed the satisfaction of a well-contrived surprise, under such strange circumstances, as my recent fate had only just been forming the daily topic of animated discussion among these friends.