Cornelius and Tausig had again been to see me, but I had to work off my resentment against them both for the fit of real ill-humour their behaviour had caused me in the previous summer.  This had happened when I expected the Bulows and the Schnorrs to stay with me together at Biebrich, and my warm interest in these two young friends, Cornelius and Tausig, led me to invite them too.  I received Cornelius’s acceptance immediately, and was the more surprised to get a letter from Geneva, whither Tausig (who appeared to have funds at his disposal all of a sudden) had carried him off on a summer excursion—­no doubt of a more important and pleasanter nature.  Without the least mention of any regret at not being able to meet me that summer, they simply announced to me that ’a glorious cigar had just been smoked to my health.’  And now, when I met them again in Vienna, I found it impossible to refrain from pointing out to them the insulting nature of their behaviour; but they seemed unable to understand how I could object to their preferring the beautiful tour into French Switzerland to paying me a visit at Biebrich.  I was obviously a tyrant to them.  Besides this, I thought Tausig’s curious conduct at my hotel suspicious.  I was told that he took his meals in the downstairs restaurant, after which he climbed up past my floor to the fourth storey, to pay long visits to Countess Krockow.  When I asked him about it, and learned that the lady in question was also a friend of Cosima’s, I expressed my surprise at his not introducing me.  He continued to evade this suggestion with singularly vague phrases, and when I ventured to tease him by the supposition of a love-affair, he said there could be no question of such a thing, as the lady was old.  So I let him alone, but the amazement which his peculiar behaviour then caused me was intensified some years later when I at last learned to know Countess Krockow very well, and was assured of her deep interest in me.  It seemed that she had desired nothing more than to make my acquaintance also at that time, but that Tausig had always refused to find an opportunity, and had made the excuse that I did not care about women’s society.

But we eventually resumed our lively and sociable habits when I began seriously to carry out my project of giving concerts in Vienna.  Although the piano rehearsals for the principal solo parts of Tristan had been put in hand diligently—­I had left them to Conductor Esser, who took them zealously in hand—­my mistrust as to the real success of these studies was unshaken, and the point which I doubted most was not so much the capabilities of the singers as their goodwill.  Moreover, Frau Dustmann’s absurd behaviour disgusted me on my frequent attendance at the rehearsals.  On the other hand, I now set my hopes on making a good impression, on the score of novelty alone, by performing selections from my own works still unknown to the Viennese public.  In this way I could show my secret enemies