Thus passed the months of April, May, and the greater part of June, without my completing even half of my composition for the third act, and all the while I was contending with a mood of the deepest melancholy.  At last came the season for the visitors to arrive; the hotel with its annexes began to fill, and it was no longer possible to think of maintaining my exceptional privilege with regard to the use of such choice quarters.  It was proposed to move me to the second storey of the main building, where only travellers who spent the night on their way to other places in Switzerland were put up, whereas in the annexes people were lodged who came to make a long stay, and who used their rooms day and night.  As a matter of fact, this arrangement answered admirably.  From this time forward I was completely undisturbed during the hours of my work in my little sitting-room with its adjoining bedchamber, as the rooms engaged for the night by strangers in this storey were perfectly empty in the daytime.

Really splendid summer weather set in eventually, lasting a good two months with a continuously cloudless sky.  I enjoyed the curious charm of protecting myself against the extremes of the sun’s heat by carefully keeping my room cool and dark, and going out on to my balcony only in the evening to surrender myself to the influence of the summer air.  Two good horn-players gave me great pleasure by providing a performance of simple folk-songs almost regularly in a skiff on the lake.  In my work, too, I had now luckily passed the critical point, and in spite of its sorrowful character, the more subdued mood of that part of my poem which I had still to master, threw me into a sincere spiritual ecstasy, during which I completed the composition of the whole work by the beginning of August, fragments only remaining to be orchestrated.

Lonely as was my life, the exciting events of the Italian war provided me plenty of interest.  I followed this struggle, as unexpected as it was significant, through the thrilling course of its successes and reverses.  Still I did not remain entirely without company.  In July, Felix Drasecke, whom I had not known before, came to Lucerne for a lengthy visit.  After hearing a performance of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde conducted by Liszt, he had almost immediately determined to make himself personally acquainted with me.  I was completely terrified by his arrival, and was at a loss to know what to do with him.  Moreover, as his talk was in a certain facetious vein, overflowing with stories of persons and circumstances for which I was gradually losing all appreciation, he soon began to bore me, a fact which astonished him, and which he recognised so clearly that he thought he had better leave after a few days.  This made me in my turn embarrassed, and I now took special care to deprive him of the bad opinion he had formed of me.  I soon learned to like him, and for a considerable time, until shortly before his departure from Lucerne, he was my daily companion, from whose intercourse I derived much pleasure, as he was a highly gifted musician and by no means a prig.  But Drasecke was not my only visitor.