Soon afterwards I was overpowered by an extraordinary depression in which, somehow, the disappointment about the turn of political events and the reaction created by my exaggerated water cure, almost ruined my health.  I perceived the triumphant return of all the disappointing signs of reaction which excluded every high ideal from intellectual life, and from which I had hoped the shocks and fermentations of the past few years had freed us for ever.  I prophesied that the time was approaching when intellectually we should be such paupers that the appearance of a new book from the pen of Heinrich Heine would create quite a sensation.  When, a short time afterwards, the Romancero appeared from the pen of this poet who had fallen into almost complete neglect, and was very well reviewed by the newspaper critics, I laughed aloud; as a matter of fact, I suppose I am among the very few Germans who have never even looked at this book, which, by the way, is said to possess great merit.

I was now compelled to pay a great deal of attention to my physical condition, as it gave me much cause for anxiety and necessitated a complete change in my methods.  I introduced this change very gradually and with the co-operation of my friends.  My circle of acquaintances had widened considerably this winter, although Karl Ritter, who had escaped from Albisbrunnen a week after my own departure and had tried to settle in our neighbourhood, ran off to Dresden, as he found Zurich much too slow for his youthful spirits.  A certain family of the name of Wesendonck, who had settled in Zurich a short time before, sought my acquaintance, and took up their abode in the same quarters in the Hintern Escherhauser where I had lived when I first came to Zurich.  They had taken the flat there on the recommendation of the famous Marschall von Bieberstein, who moved in after me in consequence of the revolution in Dresden.  I remember, on the evening of a party there, that I displayed uncontrolled excitement in a discussion with Professor Osenbruck.  I tormented him with my persistent paradoxes all through supper to such an extent that he positively loathed me, and ever afterwards carefully avoided coming into contact with me.

The acquaintance with the Wesendoncks was the means of giving me the entree to a delightful home, which in point of comfort was a great contrast to the usual run of houses in Zurich.  Herr Otto Wesendonck, who was a few years younger than I was, had amassed a considerable fortune through a partnership in a silk business in New York, and seemed to make all his plans subservient to the wishes of the young wife whom he had married a few years before.  They both came from the Lower Rhine country, and, like all the inhabitants of those parts, were fair haired.  As he was obliged to take up his abode in some part of Europe which was convenient for the furtherance of his business in New York, he chose Zurich, presumably because of its German character, in preference to Lyons.  During the previous winter they had both attended the performance of a symphony of Beethoven under my conductorship, and knowing what a sensation this performance had aroused in Zurich, they thought it would be desirable to include me in their circle of friends.