Dresden catastrophe, only I had no presentiment of the exact hurricane which would drive me thence; but you are thoroughly convinced that all the annuities and restitutions in the world would not induce me to become again what, to my greatest sorrow, I was in Dresden.  I have just a last remnant of curiosity, however, and you would give me much pleasure in letting me know how matters stand with you.  My wife has never found leisure to give me news of Dresden, the theatre, and the band.  Do relieve this last Dresden longing.  Do you happen to know anything definite about the state of the police inquiry?  The fate of Heubner, Roeckel and Bakunin troubles me much.  Anyhow, these persons ought not to be imprisoned.  But don’t let me speak of it!  In this matter one can only judge justly and adequately if one looks at the period from a lofty point of view.  Woe to him who acts with sublime purpose, and then, for his deeds, is judged by the police!  It is a grief and a shame which only our times can show.”

He had no real intention of returning to Paris.  Earlier in the same letter he speaks of ending the speculating by his proposed Jesus of Nazareth.  Indeed, the slavery of working for the market in Paris was even more repugnant to him than the liveried bondage in Saxony.  Previous to the writing of this letter Liszt had lent him twelve pounds, and by the end of July he was back in Zurich, and though, much against his will, he did go to Paris again, and, in fact, much farther, Zurich was thenceforth for some years his headquarters.  His host at first was an honest musician Alexander Mueller, who, I believe, had known him in Wuerzburg long before; but he soon set up an establishment of his own.

His main purpose at this time was to try to clear in his brain the confused mass of theories and speculations concerning music, and especially opera, which had long been seething there. Lohengrin, the reader must have observed, was not a road leading anywhere, but an impasse; a step towards the attainment of his ideal it was not:  it was, on the whole, a step backwards, although it is a much more beautiful work than Tannhaeuser.  Wagner’s mind, like Thoreau’s, Carlyle’s, Brahms’, needed filtering—­an operation that could only be performed in perfect peace and loneliness.  Thoreau went to Walden; Carlyle to Craigenputtock; Brahms at any rate retired from public musical life.  They worked out their own salvation.  Wagner felt he must do the same; as we know, he did the same:  hence many of those terrible volumes of prose-writings.  His mental condition is indicated in another few sentences from the letter quoted above—­