for renewed activity there met with a ready response.  On this point I was enlightened in a more detailed letter from Fraulein von Rhaden following the above telegram, in which she told me on no account to rely upon this invitation.  This distinct statement compelled me to reckon up the balance of my Russian receipts very seriously, and after deducting hotel and travelling expenses, the money sent to Minna, and certain payments to the furniture dealer at Wiesbaden, I found I had very little more than twelve thousand marks left.  So the scheme of buying land and building a house had to be relinquished.  But Cosima’s excellent health and high spirits dispelled all anxious thought for the present.  We drove out again in a splendid carriage, and in the most extravagant of good humours, through the avenues of the Tiergarten, dined to our hearts’ content at the Hotel de Russie, and made up our minds that bad times had fled for ever.

For the immediate present my plans were directed towards Vienna.  I had recently heard that Tristan had once more been abandoned, this time owing to the indisposition of Frau Dustmann.  In order to have this important matter more directly under my own supervision, and also because I had formed no such intimate artistic ties with any other German city as with Vienna, I clung to this as the most suitable place in which to settle.  Tausig, whom I now met there in excellent health and spirits, entirely confirmed me in this opinion, and still further strengthened it by undertaking to find me precisely the pleasant and quiet dwelling in the neighbourhood of Vienna that I had set my mind upon, and through his own landlord he succeeded in getting something exactly to my taste.  In what had been the pleasant abode of old Baron von Rackowitz at Penzing, I was offered the most delightful accommodation for a yearly rent of two thousand four hundred marks.  I could have the entire upper part of the house and the exclusive use of a shady and fairly large garden.  In the housekeeper, Franz Mrazek, I found a very obliging man, whom I at once took into my service, together with his wife Anna, an exceedingly gifted and obliging woman.  For many years, amid ever-changing fortunes, this couple remained faithful to me.  I now had to begin spending money in order to make my long-desired asylum fit and cosy both for rest and work.  The remnant of my household belongings, including iny Erard grand, was sent on from Biebrich, as well as the new furniture I had found it necessary to buy.  On the 12th of May, in lovely spring weather, I took possession of my pleasant home, and for a while wasted much time over the exciting cares connected with the fitting up of my comfortable apartments.  It was at this period that my connection with Phillip Haas and Sons was first established, which was destined with the lapse of time to give me some cause for anxiety.  For the moment every exertion expended on a domicile associated with so many hopes only helped to put me