intelligent mood; merely to play it through as we tried, in a hurried way, is impossible.  I, at least, lose on such occasions instinctively all power and intelligence; I become perfectly stupid.  But now I am quite satisfied, and if you hear the melting and hammering songs of “Siegfried” you will have a new experience of me.  The abominable part of it is that I cannot have a thing of this kind played for my own benefit.  Even to our next meeting I attach no real hope; I always feel as if we were in a hurry, and that is most detrimental to me.  I can be what I am only in a state of perfect concentration; all disturbance is my death.

I am deeply touched to hear that my letter has given you so much pleasure; I am sure you have taken the good will for the deed, for what I wrote cannot mean much to the many, just because it was so difficult to write much that might have been more useful and important to the multitude.  A description of your single poems I had to refrain from altogether, for the reason which I candidly state in the letter itself.  I cannot and will not attempt such insufficient things again.  I had, therefore, to confine myself to showing to intelligent persons the road which I had discovered for myself.  Those who cannot follow in this road and afterwards help themselves further along, I cannot help along either; that is my sincere opinion.  Concerning the misprints, I shall send you one of these days a corrected copy, just for the sake of the joke.  You will then understand that I might well be annoyed, but the fault seems to lie less with Brendel than with the copyist of my manuscript, who has performed his task in a very perfunctory manner.  I do not speak of the intentional omissions, which were your doing, and to which you were fully entitled, but of simple abominations.  However, that has been set right now, and will not happen again.

Many thanks also for lohengrin.  It must remain a shadow to me, I really have forgotten it; I do not know it.  You do all this amongst yourselves, and seem scarcely to think that I too might wish to be present.  But I honour the mysterious silence which is so conscientiously preserved on the awkward question of my return by my high and highest patrons.  Joking apart, the Emperor of Brazil has invited me to come to him at Rio Janeiro, where I am to have plenty of everything.  Therefore if not at Weymar, then at Rio.

Why do I hear so much about Frau X.?  I did not specially recommend her for Ortrud.  In my introduction I only spoke of an experienced singer of second parts, who, for want of a better, and, if she were taken in hand properly, might perhaps do for Ortrud.  In saying this I specially had regard to her agreeable, although perhaps slightly enfeebled, voice, and her well-known industry.  But that this unfortunate person should have been engaged specially for the part of Ortrud, which she had never studied, and that she should have been considered as my chosen representative