when I said to them, ‘I suppose you are glad that this happened to me?’ they replied, ‘Yes, it was very funny.’  On this incident I based my axiom that you can please the German public by your misfortunes if by nothing else.  As there was no other train to Leipzig for five hours I telegraphed to my brother-in-law, Hermann Brockhaus (whom I had asked to put me up), telling him of my delay, and allowed a man who introduced himself as a guide to persuade me to visit the Wartburg.  There I saw the partial restoration made by the Grand Duke, and also the hall containing Schwind’s pictures, to all of which I was quite indifferent.  I then turned into the restaurant of this show-place of Eisenach, and found several women there engaged in knitting stockings.  The Grand Duke of Weimar assured me some time afterwards that Tannhauser enjoyed great popularity throughout the whole of Thuringia down to the lowest peasant boy, but neither the host nor my guide seemed to know anything about it.  However, I signed the visitors’ book with my full name, and described in it the pleasant greeting I had received at the station, though I have never heard that any one noticed it.

Hermann Brockhaus, who had aged rather and grown stout, gave me a most cheerful reception when I arrived, late at night, at Leipzig.  He took me to his house, where I found Ottilie and her family, and was installed in comfort.  We had much to talk about, and my brother-in-law’s remarkably good-natured way of entering into our conversation often kept us up fascinated until all hours of the morning.  My connection with Weisheimer, a young and quite unknown composer, aroused some misgivings.  His concert programme was in fact filled with a great number of his own compositions, including a symphonic poem, just completed, entitled Der Ritter Toggenburg.  I should probably have raised a protest against carrying out this programme in its entirety had I attended the rehearsals in an undisturbed frame of mind, but it so happened that the hours I spent in the concert-room proved to be among the most intimate and pleasant recollections of my life, for there I met the Bulows again.  Hans seemed to have felt it his duty to join me in celebrating Weisheimer’s debut, his contribution being a new pianoforte concerto by Liszt.  To enter the old familiar hall of the Gewandhaus at Leipzig was enough in itself to cause me an uneasy feeling of depression, which was increased by my reception by the members of the orchestra—­of whose estrangement I was keenly conscious—­and to whom I had to introduce myself as an entire stranger.  But I felt myself suddenly transported when I discovered Cosima sitting in a corner of the hall, in deep mourning and very pale, but smiling cheerfully at me.  She had returned shortly before from Paris—­where her grandmother now lay hopelessly bedridden—­filled with grief at the inexplicably sudden death of her sister, and she now seemed, even to my eyes, to be leaving another world to approach me.  Our emotions