It was like a ray of light from a better world when, on leaving the concert-hall, I perceived Fraulein Marie von Buch, who had hurried hither with her grandmother from the Hatzfeld estate to be present at my concert, and was waiting in a boarded compartment dignified by the name of box, for me to come out after the audience had left; the young lady came up to me once more in travelling costume after Damrosch’s dinner and attempted by kindly and sympathetic assurances somewhat to assuage my evident anxiety respecting the future.  I thanked her once more by letter for her sympathy after my return to Vienna, to which she replied by a request for a contribution to her album.  In memory of the emotions which had convulsed me on leaving Berlin, and also as an indication of my mental mood to one worthy of the confidence, I added Calderon’s words, ’Things impossible to conceal, yet impossible of utterance.’  By this I felt I had conveyed to a kindly disposed person, though with a happy vagueness, some idea of the secret knowledge which was my sole inspiration.

But the results of my meeting with Henriette von Bissing in Breslau were very different.  She had followed me thither, and put up at the same hotel.  Influenced, no doubt, by my sickly appearance, she seemed to give her sympathy for myself and my situation full play.  I placed the latter before her without reserve, telling her how, ever since the upset following on my departure from Zurich in 1858, I had been unable to secure the regular income necessary for the steady pursuit of my calling; and also of my invariably vain attempts to bring my affairs into any settled and definite order.  My friend did not shrink from attributing some blame to the relationship between Frau Wesendonck and my wife, and declared that she felt it her mission to conciliate them.  She approved my settling down at Penzing, and only hoped that I might not spoil its beneficial effect upon me by distant enterprises.  She would not listen to my plan of touring in Russia, in the coming winter, in order to earn money for my absolute necessities, and herself undertook to provide from her own very considerable fortune the not unimportant sum requisite to maintain me in independence for some time to come.  But she explained to me that for a short while longer I was to try and get along through thick and thin, as she would have some difficulty—­possibly a good deal—­in placing the promised money at my disposal.

Greatly cheered by the impressions of this meeting I returned to Vienna on the 9th December.  At Lowenberg I had been obliged to remit to Vienna the greater portion of the Prince’s gift, part of it for Minna, and part for the payment of debts.  Though I had but little cash I felt thoroughly sanguine; I could now greet my few friends with tolerable good-humour, and among them Peter Cornelius, who looked in on me every evening.  As Heinrich Porges and Gustav Schonaich sometimes joined us, we founded an intimate