neglected to do this for himself, and yet this was all he lacked to make a successful dramatic composer.  I feel bound to confess that he possessed ’a good deal of melody’; but this, he added, did not seem sufficient to inspire the singers with the requisite enthusiasm.  His experience was that Schroder-Devrient, in his Adele de Foix, would render very indifferently the same final passage with which, in Bellini’s Romeo and Juliet, she would put the audience into an ecstasy.  The reason for this, he presumed, must lie in the subject-matter.  I at once promised him that I would supply him with a libretto in which he would be able to introduce these and similar melodies to the greatest advantage.  To this he gladly agreed, and I therefore set aside for versification, as a suitable text for Reissiger, my Hohe Braut, founded on Konig’s romance, which I had once before submitted to Scribe.  I promised to bring Reissiger a page of verse for every piano rehearsal, and this I faithfully did until the whole book was done.  I was much surprised to learn some time later that Reissiger had had a new libretto written for him by an actor named Kriethe.  This was called the Wreck of the Medusa.  I then learned that the wife of the conductor, who was a suspicious woman, had been filled with the greatest concern at my readiness to give up a libretto to her husband.  They both thought the book was good and full of striking effects, but they suspected some sort of trap in the background, to escape from which they must certainly exercise the greatest caution.  The result was that I regained possession of my libretto and was able, later on, to help my old friend Kittl with it in Prague; he set it to music of his own, and entitled it Die Franzosen vor Nizza.  I heard that it was frequently performed in Prague with great success, though I never saw it myself; and I was also told at the same time by a local critic that this text was a proof of my real aptitude as a librettist, and that it was a mistake for me to devote myself to composition.  As regards my Tannhauser, on the other hand, Laube used to declare it was a misfortune that I had not got an experienced dramatist to supply me with a decent text for my music.

For the time being, however, this work of versification had the desired result, and Reissiger kept steadily to the study of Rienzi.  But what encouraged him even more than my verses was the growing interest of the singers, and above all the genuine enthusiasm of Tichatschek.  This man, who had been so ready to leave the delights of the theatre piano for a shooting party, now looked upon the rehearsals of Rienzi as a genuine treat.  He always attended them with radiant eyes and boisterous good-humour.  I soon felt myself in a state of constant exhilaration:  favourite passages were greeted with acclamation by the singers at every rehearsal, and a concerted number of the third finale, which unfortunately had afterwards to be omitted owing to its length, actually became