amid the pleasant associations of such a trip.  Here I took the fancy of engaging quarters in Aussig on the romantic Schreckenstein, where for several days I occupied the little public room, in which straw was laid down for me to sleep on at night.  I found recreation in daily ascents of the Wostrai, the highest peak in the neighbourhood, and so keenly did the fantastic solitude quicken my youthful spirit, that I clambered about the ruins of the Schreckenstein the whole of one moonlit night, wrapped only in a blanket, in order myself to provide the ghost that was lacking, and delighted myself with the hope of scaring some passing wayfarer.

Here I drew up in my pocket-book the detailed plan of a three-act opera on the ‘Venusberg,’ and subsequently carried out the composition of this work in strict accordance with the sketch I then made.

One day, when climbing the Wostrai, I was astonished, on turning the corner of a valley, to hear a merry dance tune whistled by a goatherd perched up on a crag.  I seemed immediately to stand among the chorus of pilgrims filing past the goatherd in the valley; but I could not afterwards recall the goatherd’s tune, so I was obliged to help myself out of the matter in the usual way.

Enriched by these spoils, I returned to Toplitz in a wonderfully cheerful frame of mind and robust health, but on receiving the interesting news that Tichatschek and Schroder-Devrient were on the point of returning, I was impelled to set off once more for Dresden.  I took this step, not so much to avoid missing any of the early rehearsals of Rienzi, as because I wanted to prevent the management replacing it by something else.  I left Minna for a time with my mother, and reached Dresden on 18th July.

I hired a small lodging in a queer house, since pulled down, facing the Maximilian Avenue, and entered into a fairly lively intercourse with our operatic stars who had just returned.  My old enthusiasm for Schroder-Devrient revived when I saw her again more frequently in opera.  Strange was the effect produced upon me when I heard her for the first time in Gretry’s Blaubart, for I could not help remembering that this was the first opera I had ever seen.  I had been taken to it as a boy of five (also in Dresden), and I still retained my wondrous first impressions of it.  All my earliest childish memories were revived, and I recollected how frequently and with what emphasis I had myself sung Bluebeard’s song:  Ha, die Falsche!  Die Thure offen! to the amusement of the whole house, with a paper helmet of my own making on my head.  My friend Heine still remembered it well.