Volume 2 / Part 3 — PART III (continued 7)

In addition to Count Hatzfeld, the two other attaches, Prince Reuss and Count Donhoff, often shared these domestic gatherings. The former seemed to be the politician of the company, and was particularly commended to me on account of the great and able efforts he had made on my behalf at the Imperial Court, while the latter simply appealed to me by his looks and by his attractive and open-hearted friendliness. Here, too, I was again frequently brought into social contact with Prince and Princess Metternich, but I could not help noticing that a certain embarrassment marked our demeanour. Owing to her energetic complicity in the fate of Tannhauser, Princess Pauline had not only been subjected to the coarsest handling by the press, but had also suffered the most ungallant and ill-natured treatment at the hands of so-called higher society. Her husband seems to have borne all this very well, though doubtless he experienced many a bitter moment. It was difficult for me now to understand what compensation the Princess could have found in a genuine sympathy for my art for all she had been obliged to endure.

Thus I frequently spent the evenings in familiar intercourse with my amiable hosts, and was even seduced into trying to instruct them about Schopenhauer. On one occasion a larger evening assembly led to almost intoxicating excitement. Selections from several of my works were vivaciously played in a circle of friends all very much prepossessed in my favour. Saint-Saens took the piano, and I had the unusual experience of hearing the final scene of Isolde rendered by the Neapolitan Princess Campo-Reale, who, to that excellent musician's accompaniment, sang it with a beautiful German accent and an astounding faithfulness of intonation.

I thus passed three weeks in peace and quiet. Meanwhile, Count Pourtales had procured me a superior Prussian ministerial passport for my projected visit to Germany, his attempt to get me a Saxon passport having failed, owing to the nervousness of Herr von Seebach.

This time, before taking leave of Paris—for ever, as I supposed—I felt impelled to bid an intimate farewell to the few French friends who had stood by me loyally in the difficulties I had overcome. We met at a cafe in Rue Lafitte—Gasperini, Champfleury, Truinet and I—and talked until late in the night. When I was about to start on my homeward way to the Faubourg St. Germain, Champfleury, who lived on the heights of Montmartre, declared that he must take me home, because we did not know whether we should ever see each other again. I enjoyed the exquisite effect of the bright moonlight on the deserted Paris streets; only the huge business firms, whose premises extend to the uppermost floors, seemed to have turned night into day in a picturesque fashion, particularly those houses which have been pressed into the service of trade in the Rue Richelieu. Champfleury smoked his short pipe and discussed with me the prospects of French politics. His father was, he told me, an old Bonapartist of the first water, but had been moved to exclaim, a short time before, after reading the papers day after day, 'Pourtant, avant de mourir je voudrais voir autre chose.' We parted very affectionately at the door of the embassy.

I took leave in equally friendly fashion of a young Parisian friend, who has not yet been mentioned—Gustave Dore—who had been sent to me by Ollivier at the very outset of my Paris venture. He had proposed to make a fantastic drawing of me in the act of conducting, without, it is true, ever realising his intention. I do not know why, except, perhaps, that I did not show any particular inclination for it. Dore remained loyal to me, however, and was one of those who made a point of demonstrating their friendship just now in their extreme indignation at the outrage inflicted on me. This extraordinarily prolific artist proposed to include the Nibelungen among his many subjects for illustration, and I wished first to make him acquainted with my interpretation of this cycle of legends. This was undoubtedly difficult, but as he assured me he had a friend well versed in the German language and German literature, I gave myself the pleasure of presenting him with the recently published pianoforte score of Rheingold, the text of which would give him the clearest idea of the plan on which I had moulded the material. I thus returned the compliment of his having sent me a copy of his illustrations to Dante, which had just appeared.

Full of pleasant and agreeable impressions, which formed the only actual gain of real worth that I reaped from my Paris enterprise, I left the generous asylum offered by my Prussian friends the first week in August to go, first, to Soden by way of Cologne. Here I found Minna in the society of Mathilde Schiffner, who seemed to have become indispensable to her as an easy victim for her tyranny. I spent two extremely painful days there in trying to make the poor woman understand that she was to establish herself at Dresden (where I was not at present allowed to stay), while I looked about me in Germany—in Vienna first—for a new centre of operations. She glanced at her friend with peculiar satisfaction on hearing my proposal and my promise to remember, under any circumstances, to provide her with three thousand marks a year. This bargain set the standard of my relation to her for the rest of her life. She went with me as far as Frankfort, where I parted from her to go, for the time being, to Weimar—the town where Schopenhauer had died a short time before.