summer weather set in, which lasted a considerable time.  With affectionate enthusiasm we at once attributed this change to Liszt, as he arrived in Switzerland in the best of spirits immediately after we had returned to Zurich.  Thereupon followed one of those delightful weeks, during which every hour of the day becomes a treasured memory.  I had already taken more roomy apartments on the second floor in the so-called Vorderen Escher Hausern, in which I had before occupied a flat that was much too small on the ground floor.  Frau Stockar-Escher, who was part owner of the house, was enthusiastically devoted to me.  She was full of artistic talent herself, being an excellent amateur painter in water-colours, and had taken great pains to rearrange the new dwelling as luxuriously as possible.  The unexpected improvement in my circumstances brought about by the continued demands for my operas, allowed me to indulge my desire for comfortable domestic arrangements, which had been reawakened since my stay at the hydropathic establishment, and which, after being repressed, had become quite a passionate longing.

I had the flat so charmingly furnished with carpets and decorative furniture that Liszt himself was surprised into admiration as he entered my ‘petite elegance’, as he called it.  Now for the first time I enjoyed the delight of getting to know my friend better as a fellow-composer.  In addition to many of his celebrated pianoforte pieces, which he had only recently written, we went through several new symphonies with great ardour, and especially his Faust Symphony.  Later on, I had the opportunity of describing in detail the impressions I received at this time in a letter which I wrote to Marie von Wittgenstein, which was afterwards published.  My delight over everything I heard by Liszt was as deep as it was sincere, and, above all, extraordinarily stimulating.  I even thought of beginning to compose again after the long interval that had elapsed.  What could be more full of promise and more momentous to me than this long-desired meeting with the friend who had been engaged all his life in his masterly practice of music, and had also devoted himself so absolutely to my own works, and to diffusing the proper comprehension of them.  Those almost bewilderingly delightful days, with the inevitable rush of friends and acquaintances, were interrupted by an excursion to the Lake of Lucerne, accompanied only by Herwegh, to whom Liszt had the charming idea of offering a ’draught of fellowship’ with himself and me from the three springs of the Grutli.

After this my friend took leave of us, after having arranged for another meeting with me in the autumn.