so odious to me that I could not even bring myself to hear him in Lohengrin.  I therefore let the matter sink into oblivion, and concentrated myself exclusively on getting into touch with the Meistersinger again.  I first set to work on the instrumentation of the completed portion of the first act, of which I had only arranged detached fragments as yet.  But as summer approached, the old anxiety as to my future subsistence began to pervade all my thoughts and sensations in the present.  It was clear that, if I were to fulfil all my responsibilities, particularly with regard to Minna, I should soon have to think of undertaking some lucrative enterprise again.

It was therefore most opportune when a quite unexpected invitation from the management of the National Theatre in Buda-Pesth reached me to give two concerts there, in compliance with which I went at the end of July to the Hungarian capital, and was received by the manager Radnodfay.  There I met a really very talented violinist named Remenyi, who at one time had been a protege of Liszt, and showed boundless admiration for me, even declaring that the invitation to me had been given entirely on his initiative.  Although there was no prospect of large earnings here, as I had professed myself content to accept a thousand marks for each of the two concerts, I had reason to be pleased both with their success and with the great interest manifested by the audience.  In this city, where the Magyar opposition to Austria was still at its strongest, I made the acquaintance of some exceedingly gifted and distinguished-looking young men, among them Herr Rosti, of whom I have a pleasant recollection.  They organised a truly idyllic festivity for me, in the form of a feast, held by a few intimates on an island in the Danube, where we gathered under an ancient oak tree, as though for a patriarchal ceremony.  A young lawyer, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, had undertaken to propose the toast of the evening, and filled me with amazement and deep emotion, not only by the fire of his delivery, but also by the truly noble earnestness of his ideas, which he based upon a perfect knowledge of all my works and undertakings.  We returned home down the Danube in the small boats of the Rowing Club, of which my hosts were members, and on our way had to face a hurricane, which lashed the mighty stream into the wildest tumult.  There was only one lady in our party, Countess Bethlen-Gabor, who was seated with me in a narrow boat.  Rosti and a friend of his who had the oars were concerned solely with the fear that our boat would be shivered against one of the timber-rafts, towards which the flood was carrying us, and therefore exerted themselves to the utmost to avoid them; whereas I could see no other way of escape, especially for the lady sitting beside me, than by boarding one of these very rafts.  In order to effect this (against the wish of our two oarsmen) I seized with one hand a projecting peg on