At this time symptoms of a possible improvement in my position appeared.  Karl Ritter, unfortunately for himself, wrote to me from Stuttgart while I was at the hydro, describing his own private attempts to secure the benefits of a water cure—­not by means of baths, but by drinking quantities of water.  I had found out that it was most dangerous to drink large quantities of water without undergoing the rest of the treatment, so I implored Karl to submit to the regular course, and not to have an effeminate fear of privations, and to come at once to Albisbrunnen.  He took me at my word, and to my great delight arrived in a few days’ time at Albisbrunnen.  Theoretically he was filled with enthusiasm for hydropathy, but he soon objected to it in practice; and he denounced the use of cold milk as indigestible and against the dictates of Nature, as mother’s milk was always warm.  He found the cold packs and the cold baths too exciting, and preferred treating himself in a comfortable and pleasant way behind the doctor’s back.  He soon discovered a wretched confectioner’s shop in the neighbouring village, and when he was caught buying cheap pastry on the sly, he was very angry.  He soon grew perfectly miserable, and would fain have escaped, had not a certain feeling of honour prevented him from doing so.  The news reached him here of the sudden death of a rich uncle, who had left a considerable fortune to every member of Karl’s family.  His mother, in telling him and me of the improvement in her position, declared that she was now able to assure me the income which the two families of Laussot and Ritter had offered me some time ago.  Thus I stepped into an annual income of two thousand four hundred marks for as long as I required it, and into partnership with the Ritter family.

This happy and encouraging turn of events made me decide to complete my original sketch of the Nibelungen, and to bring it out in our theatres without paying any regard to the practicability of its various parts.  In order to do this I felt that I must free myself from all obligations to the management of the Weimar theatre.  I had already drawn six hundred marks salary from this source, but Karl was enchanted to place this sum at my disposal in order that I might return it.  I sent the money back to Weimar with a letter expressing my most grateful acknowledgments to the management for their conduct towards me, and at the same time I wrote to Liszt, giving him the fullest particulars of my great plan, and explaining how I felt absolutely compelled to carry it out.

Liszt, in his reply, told me how delighted he was to know that I was now in a position to undertake such a remarkable work, which he considered in every respect worthy of me if only on account of its surprising originality.  I began to breathe freely at last, because I had always felt that it was merely self-deception on my part to maintain that it would be possible to produce Junger Siegfried with the limited means at the disposal of even the best German theatre.