We soon found that he was an extremely good-natured Hanoverian nobleman, who had been travelling about Italy for some time for pleasure, and who was able to give us very useful information concerning intercourse with the Italians.  His advice was of great service when we were visiting the Borromean Islands, where my acquaintances parted from my wife and myself to travel back by the nearest route, whereas we intended proceeding further across the Simplon and through Le Valais to Chamounix.

From the fatigue my tour had so far occasioned me, I felt that it would be some time before I started on a similar one again.  I was therefore eager to see what was best worth seeing in Switzerland as thoroughly as possible now that I had the chance.  Moreover, I was just then, and indeed had been for some time, in that impressionable humour from which I might anticipate important results to myself from novel scenery, and I did not like to miss Mont Blanc.  A view of it was attended with great difficulties, amongst which may be mentioned our arrival by night at Martigny, where, owing to the crowded state of the hotels, we were everywhere refused accommodation, and it was only on account of a little intrigue between a postillion and a maidservant that we found clandestine shelter for the night in a private house from which the owners were absent.

We dutifully visited the so-called Mer de Glace in the Val de Chamounix and the Flegere, from which I obtained a most impressive view of Mont Blanc.  However, my imagination was less busied with the ascent of that peak than with the spectacle I beheld when crossing the Col des Geants, as the great elevation that we attained did not appeal to me so much as the unbroken and sublime wildness of the latter.  For some time I cherished the intention of undertaking just one more venture of the kind.  While descending the Flegere, Minna had a fall and sprained her ankle; the consequence of this was so painful as to deter us from any further adventures.  We therefore saw ourselves forced to hasten on our journey home via Geneva.  But even from this more important and grander expedition, and almost the only one I had ever undertaken purely for recreation, I returned with a strangely unsatisfied feeling, and I could not resist the longing for something decisive in the distance, that would give a fresh direction to my life.

On reaching home I found announcements of a new and quite different turn in my destiny.  These consisted of inquiries and commissions from various German theatres anxious to produce Tannhauser.  The first to apply was the Schwerin Court Theatre.  Rockel’s youngest sister, who afterwards married the actor Moritz (whom I had known from my earliest youth), had now come to Germany as a youthful singer from England, where she had been educated.  She had given such an enthusiastic account of the impression produced upon her by Tannhauser at Weimar, to an official at the theatre there named Stocks, who held the position