the awkward position of being about to produce in Berlin the very opera which he had before declined in Munich, as it had been accepted by his predecessor in office.  He promised me to consider what steps he would take in this predicament.  In order to learn the result of Kustner’s deliberations, I determined, on 2nd June, to seek him out, and this time in Berlin itself.  But at Leipzig I found a letter in which he begged me to wait patiently a little longer for his final verdict.  I took advantage of being in the neighbourhood of Halle to pay a visit to my eldest brother Albert.  I was very much grieved and depressed to find the poor fellow, whom I must give the credit of having the greatest perseverance and a quite remarkable talent for dramatic song, living in the unworthy and mean circumstances which the Halle Theatre offered to him and his family.  The realisation of conditions into which I myself had once nearly sunk now filled me with indescribable abhorrence.  Still more harrowing was it to hear my brother speak of this state in tones which showed, alas, only too plainly, the hopeless submission with which he had already resigned himself to its horrors.  The only consolation I could find was the personality and childlike nature of his step-daughter Johanna, who was then fifteen, and who sang me Spohr’s Rose, wie bist du so schon with great expression and in a voice of an extraordinarily beautiful quality.

Then I returned to Dresden, and at last, in wonderful weather, undertook the pleasant journey to Toplitz with Minna and one of her sisters, reaching that place on 9th June, where we took up our quarters at a second-class inn, the Eiche, at Schonau.  Here we were soon joined by my mother, who paid her usual yearly visit to the warm baths all the more gladly this time because she knew she would find me there.  If she had before had any prejudice against Minna because of my premature marriage to her, a closer acquaintance with her domestic gifts soon changed it into respect, and she quickly learned to love the partner of my doleful days in Paris.  Although my mother’s vagaries demanded no small consideration, yet what particularly delighted me about her was the astonishing vivacity of her almost childlike imagination, a faculty she retained to such a degree that one morning she complained that my relation of the Tannhauser legend on the previous evening had given her a whole night of pleasant but most tiring sleeplessness.

By dint of appealing letters to Schletter, a wealthy patron of art in Leipzig, I managed to do something for Kietz, who, had remained behind in misery in Paris, and also to provide Minna with medical treatment.  I also succeeded to a certain extent in ameliorating my own woeful financial position.  Scarcely were these tasks accomplished, when I started off in my old boyish way on a ramble of several days on foot through the Bohemian mountains, in order that I might mentally work out my plan of the ‘Venusberg’