that he should make a translation of Tannhauser for practical use.  He sang to me the French text of some of the main themes which he had already translated, and they seemed to me good.  After I had spent a day and a night with the singer, who had once been such a popular favourite, and was now condemned to look forward to a sad decline, I felt in very good spirits and full of hope, more especially as his intelligent way of approaching my opera gave me a pleasing idea of the extent to which it was possible to cultivate the French mind.  In spite of this I had soon to give up the notion of Roger’s working for me, as for a long time he was entirely absorbed in trying to make secure the position into which he had fallen through his terrible accident.  He was so busy with his own affairs that he could hardly give me an answer to my inquiries, and for the time being I lost sight of him altogether.

I had come to this arrangement with Roger more by chance than out of necessity, as I continued to adhere firmly to my plan simply to seek a suitable pied-a-terre in Paris.  My serious artistic enterprises, on the other hand, were still directed to Germany, from which, from another point of view, I was an enforced exile.  Soon, however, the whole aspect of affairs changed:  the proposed performance of Tristan in Karlsruhe, on which I had continued to keep an eye, was finally announced as abandoned.  I had to remain uncertain as to the precise reason why this undertaking had been given up, which at an earlier stage had apparently been pursued with so much zeal.  Devrient pointed out to me that all his attempts to secure an appropriate representation of the rule of Isolde had been shattered by my deciding against the singer Garrigues (who had already married young Schnorr), and that he felt his incapacity to offer advice on the rest of the business all the more keenly because Schnorr, the tenor, whose devotion to me was so great, had himself despaired of being able to execute the last portion of the task assigned to him.  I realised at once that this was an obstacle which I should have been able to overcome, together with all its disastrous consequences, if I had been permitted, even for a brief space of time, to visit Karlsruhe.  But the mere expression of this wish seemed, as soon as it was reiterated, to arouse the bitterest feelings against me.  Devrient expressed his opinion on the matter with so much violence and brutality that I could not help seeing that what kept me from Karlsruhe was mainly his personal disinclination to have me there, or to be interfered with in the conduct of his theatre.