under his direction, a factwhich finally decided me to remain.  In defiance of the cold, raw and gloomy weather, we discussed as cheerfully as we could my unfortunate position.  By way of increasing my capital, it was resolved to hand over the Grand Duke of Baden’s gold snuff-box to our good old friend Weitzmann for sale.  The sum of two hundred and seventy marks realised by this was brought to me at the Hotel Brandenburg, where I was dining with the Bulows, and was an addition to my reserves that furnished us with many a jest.  As Bulow had to complete the preparations for his concert, I drove out alone with Cosima on the promenade, as before, in a fine carriage.  This time all our jocularity died away into silence.  We gazed speechless into each other’s eyes; an intense longing for an avowal of the truth mastered us and led to a confession—­which needed no words—­of the boundless unhappiness which oppressed us.  The experience brought relief to us both, and the profound tranquillity which ensued enabled us to attend the concert in a cheerful, unembarrassed mood.  I was actually able to fix my attention clearly on an exquisitely refined and elevated performance of Beethoven’s smaller Concert Overture (in C major), and likewise on Hans’s very clever arrangement of Gluck’s overture to Paris and Helen.  We noticed Alwine Frommann in the audience, and during the interval met her on the grand staircase of the concert-hall.  After the second part had begun and the stairs were empty, we sat for some time on one of the steps chatting gaily with our old friend.  After the concert we were due at my friend Weitzmann’s for supper, the length and abundance of which reduced us, whose hearts yearned for profound peace, to almost frantic despair.  But the day came to an end at last, and after a night spent under Bulow’s roof, I continued my journey.  Our farewell reminded me so vividly of that first exquisitely pathetic parting from Cosima at Zurich, that all the intervening years vanished like a dream of desolation separating two days of lifelong moment and decision.  If on the first occasion our presentiment of something mysterious and inexplicable had compelled silence, it was now no less impossible to give words to that which we silently acknowledged.

I was met at one of the stations in Silesia by Conductor Seifriz, who accompanied me in one of the Prince’s carriages to Lowenberg.  The old Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen was already very well disposed towards me on account of his great friendship for Liszt, and had, moreover, been fully informed of my position by Heinrich Porges, who had been engaged by him for a short time.  He had invited me to give a concert in his small castle to an audience composed exclusively of invited guests.  I was very comfortably accommodated in apartments on the ground floor of his house, whither he frequently came on his wheeled chair from his own rooms directly opposite.  Here I could not only feel at ease, but be to some extent hopeful.  I at once began