no promise from him.  I then had recourse to Schnorr, with a similar result, and I was at last obliged to acknowledge that my affairs were in a bad way.  Of this I made no secret in my occasional communications to the Wesendoncks, who, apparently to cheer me up, invited me to meet them in Venice, where they were just going for a pleasure trip.  Heaven knows what my intention was as I started off in a casual sort of way by train, first to Trieste and then by steamer (which did not agree with me at all) to Venice, where I again put up in my little room at the Hotel Danieli.

My friends, whom I found in very flourishing circumstances, seemed to be revelling in the pictures, and fully expected that a participation in their enjoyment would drive away my ‘blues.’  They seemed to have no desire to realise my position in Vienna.  Indeed, after the ill-success of my Paris under-taking, entered upon with such glorious anticipations, I had learned to recognise among most of my friends a tacitly submissive abandonment of all hope for my future success.

Wesendonck, who always went about armed with huge field-glasses, and was ever ready for sight-seeing, only once took me with him to see the Academy of Arts, a building which on my former visit to Venice I had only known from the outside.  In spite of all my indifference, I must confess that the ‘Assumption of the Virgin’ by Titian exercised a most sublime influence over me, so that, as soon as I realised its conception, my old powers revived within me, as though by a sudden flash of inspiration.

I determined at once on the composition of the Meistersinger.

After a frugal dinner with my old acquaintances Tessarin and the Wesendoncks, whom I invited to the Albergo San Alarco, and once more exchanging friendly greetings with Luigia, my former attendant at the Palazzo Giustiniani, to the astonishment of my friends I suddenly left Venice.  I had spent four dreary days there, and now started by train on my dull journey to Vienna, following the roundabout overland route.  It was during this journey that the music of the Meistersinger first dawned on my mind, in which I still retained the libretto as I had originally conceived it.  With the utmost distinctness I at once composed the principal part of the Overture in C major.

Under the influence of these last impressions I arrived in Vienna in a very cheerful frame of mind.  I at once announced my return to Cornelius by sending him a small Venetian gondola, which I had bought for him in Venice, and to which I added a canzona written with nonsensical Italian words.  The communication of my plan for the immediate composition of the Meistersinger made him almost frantic with delight, and until my departure from Vienna he remained in a state of delirious excitement.