into the best of spirits.  The grand-piano arrived in due course, and with the addition of various engravings after Raphael, which had fallen to my lot in the Biebrich division, my music-room was completely furnished in readiness for the 22nd of May, when celebrated my fiftieth birthday.  In honour of the occasion the Merchants’ Choral Society gave me an evening serenade with Chinese-lantern illuminations, in which a deputation of students also joined and greeted me with an enthusiastic oration.  I had laid in a supply of wine, and everything passed off excellently.  The Mrazeka looked after my housekeeping fairly well, and thanks to the culinary arts of Anna, I was able to invite Tausig and Cornelius to dine with me pretty frequently.

But I was soon in great trouble again, on account of Minna, who bitterly reproached me for everything I did.  Having made up my mind never to answer her again, I wrote this time to her daughter Nathalie—­who was still in ignorance of the relationship between them—­referring her to my decision of the previous year.  On the other hand, the fact that I sadly stood in need just now of some womanly attentions and care in the management of the household became abundantly clear to me when I expressed to Mathilde Maier of Mayence the ingenuous wish that she would come and supply the deficiency.

I had certainly thought that my good friend was sensible enough to interpret my meaning correctly without feeling put to the blush, and I was very likely right, but I had not made sufficient allowance for her mother and her bourgeois surroundings generally.  She appears to have been thrown into the greatest excitement by my proposal, while her friend Louise Wagner was in the end so powerfully influenced that she frankly advised me, with homely shrewdness and precision, to obtain a legal separation from my wife first of all, after which everything else would be easily arranged.  Grievously shocked, I at once withdrew my offer, as having been made without due deliberation, and strove as far as possible to allay the excitement thus produced.  On the other hand, Friederike Meyer’s inexplicable fate still caused me much involuntary anxiety.  After she had spent several months of the previous winter in Venice, apparently to her benefit, I had written to her from St. Petersburg suggesting that she should meet me at the Bulows’ in Berlin.  I had taken into mature consideration the kindly interest which Cosima had conceived for her, with a view to discussing what steps we could take to bring order into our friend’s flagrantly disorganised circumstances.  She did not appear, however, but wrote instead to inform me that she had taken up her abode with a lady friend at Coburg, as her very delicate state of health seriously interfered with her theatrical career, and was endeavouring to maintain herself by occasional appearances at the small theatre there.  It was obvious that for many reasons I could not send her an invitation such as that sent to Mathilde Maier,