Wilhelm Baumgartner, my old Zurich acquaintance, came to spend a few weeks in Lucerne out of kindness to me.  And lastly Alexander Seroff from St. Petersburg came to stay some time in the neighbourhood.  He was a remarkable man, of great intelligence, and openly prepossessed in favour of Liszt and myself.  He had heard my Lohengrin in Dresden and wanted to know more of me—­an ambition I was obliged to satisfy by playing Tristan to him in the rough-and-ready fashion which was peculiar to me.  I went up Mount Pilatus with Drasecke, and again had to look after a companion who suffered from giddiness.  To celebrate his departure I invited him to take an excursion to Brunnen and the Grutli.  After this we took leave of each other for the time being, as his moderate resources did not permit him to remain any longer, and I too was seriously thinking of taking my departure.

The question now arose as to where I was to go.  I had addressed letters, first through Eduard Devrient, and finally direct to the Grand Duke of Baden, asking the latter for a guarantee that I might settle, if not in Karlsruhe itself, at least in some small place in the neighbourhood.  This would suffice to set at rest a craving, which could no longer be suppressed, for intercourse now and then with an orchestra and a company of singers, if only to hear them play.  I learned later that the Grand Duke had really bestirred himself in the matter by writing to the King of Saxony.  But the view still prevailed in that quarter that I could not be granted an amnesty, but could only hope to receive an act of grace; it being assumed, of course, that I would first have to report myself to a magistrate for examination.  Thus the fulfilment of my wish remained impossible, and I shrank in dismay before the problem of how to secure a performance of my Tristan which I could superintend in person, as I had determined to do.  I was assured that the Grand Duke would know what measures to resort to in order to meet the situation.  But the question was, where was I to turn for a place in which to settle with some prospect of being able to remain there.  I longed for a permanent home again.  After due consideration I decided that Paris was the only place where I could make sure of now and then hearing a good orchestra and a first-class quartette.  Without these stimulating influences Zurich at last became unbearable, and in no other city but Paris, where I could stay undisturbed, could I safely reckon on being able to obtain artistic recreation of a sufficiently high standard.

At last I had to bestir myself to come to a decision about my wife.  We had now been apart from each other for a whole year.  After the hard lessons she had received from me, and which, according to her letters, had left a deep impression upon her, I was justified in assuming that the renewal of our life in common might be made tolerable; especially as it would remove the grave difficulty of her maintenance.