“It is impossible for me to conduct my overture myself in Paris, for this reason, that it will not be performed there at all, as there was not proper time for rehearsal—­perhaps “next year”.  I received this answer on the eve of my departure from Paris, and truly in a very pleasant quarter.  I think I never laughed so loud and so from the bottom of my heart as on that evening and in that place.”

It will be seen that Wagner never ceased to work during all this dreary time.  He drafted his Wieland the Smith, made tentative shots at what at length grew into the Nibelung’s Ring, and poured forth an enormous quantity of very prosy prose.  Deferring a consideration of this last, let me tell briefly what his everyday life was.  Through a little money from pamphlets, performing fees, etc., but mainly through the generosity of friends, he managed to live; though, as I have said, he never was quite sure about his next meal, a raven always flew in from somewhere just in the nick of time.  Minna came, and her sister, and his home was made comfortable for him; he had many friends; he rapidly became recognized as many a cubit taller than any other musician in the parish.  The opera and some orchestral concerts were placed under his direction; and Hans von Buelow came to serve his apprenticeship as conductor under him, very largely at the theatre.  Wagner mentions a performance of the Flying Dutchman, which afforded him pleasure; for though, as he himself says somewhere, the band consisted of players more accustomed to play at dances than in grand opera, and not a singer of celebrity took part, yet all were painstaking, enthusiastic and sympathetic, and a fine representation was the result.  This was the work he did outside his own house; his inside occupations I have mentioned.  He lived with almost clockwork punctuality.  Every afternoon he walked, accompanied by his dog, amongst the mountains, and to these walks may be attributed, I think, the atmosphere and colour of the Ring and its backgrounds.  Wagner was as great a master as has lived of pictorial music, and the hills and ravines, the storms amongst the pines, were things he must have craved to translate into terms of his own art.  After all, he found time also for a good deal of social intercourse, though the enormous quantity of work he turned out makes this difficult to believe.  But Liszt visited him; Praeger undoubtedly did; Buelow, as said, was with him for some time; the Wesendoncks, his greatest pecuniary benefactors after a while, were there; Wille and his wife were there; Alexander Ritter, son of Frau Ritter, who made Wagner a regular allowance from 1851 to 1856, became his firm friend, and afterwards married one of his nieces; there were Baumgaertner and Sulzer—­in fact, a bare list of names would fill a few pages.  We must not take Wagner’s plaints in his letters too seriously; he was an overworked, nervous man of moods; like Mr. Micawber, he seems to have come home