the government, and received permission to settle in Dresden.  Minna now thought herself authorised to take a large flat, in which it would be easy to arrange the furniture allotted to her, assuming that after a little while I would share the abode with her, at least periodically.  I had to try to meet cheerfully her demands for the wherewithal to carry out her wishes, and especially to procure the two thousand seven hundred marks she required for the purpose.  The more calmly I acted in this matter, the more deeply she seemed to be offended by the quiet frigidity of my letters.  Reproaches for supposed injuries in the past and recriminations of every kind now poured in from her faster than ever.  At last I turned to my old friend Pusinelli.  Out of affection for me he had always been a loyal helper of my intractable spouse.  Through his mediation I now prescribed the strong medicine which my sister Clara a short while ago had recommended as the best remedy for the patient, and asked him to impress upon Minna the necessity for a legal separation.  It seemed to be no easy task for my poor friend to carry out this proposal in earnest, but he had been asked to do it, and obeyed.  He informed me that she was very much alarmed, but that she definitely refused to discuss an amicable separation, and, as my sister had foreseen, Minna’s conduct now changed in a very striking manner; she ceased to annoy me and seemed to realise her position and abide by it.  To relieve her heart trouble, Pusinelli had prescribed for her a cure at Reichenhall.  I obtained the money for this, and apparently she spent the summer in tolerable spirits in the very place in which a year ago I had met Cosima undergoing a cure.

Once more I turned to my work, to which I always had recourse as the best means of raising my spirits so soon as interruptions were removed.  One night I was disturbed by a strange event.  The evening had been pleasant, and I had sketched out the pretty theme for Pogner’s Anrede, ‘Das schone Fest Johannistag,’ etc., when, while I was dozing off and still had this tune floating in my mind, I was suddenly awakened to full consciousness by an unrestrained outburst of a woman’s laughter above my room.  This laughter, growing madder and madder, at last turned into a horrible whimpering and frightful howling.  I sprang out of bed in a terrified condition, to discover that the sound proceeded from my servant Lieschen, who had been attacked with hysterical convulsions as she lay in bed in the room overhead.  My host’s maid went to help her, and a doctor was summoned.  While I was horrified at the thought that the girl would soon die, I could not help wondering at the curious tranquillity of the others who were present.  I was told that such fits were of common occurrence in young girls, especially after dances.  Without heeding this, I was riveted to the spot for a long time by the spectacle, with the horrible symptoms it presented.  Several times I saw what resembled a childish fit of merriment pass, like the ebb and flow of the tide, through all the different stages, up to the most impudent laughter, and then to what seemed like the screams of the damned in torture.  When the disturbance had somewhat subsided, I went to bed again, and once more Pogner’s ‘Johannistag’ rose to my memory, and gradually banished the fearful impressions that I had undergone.