on a pleasure trip.  I had no difficulty in making my friend understand my situation, which I found her most willing to relieve.  First of all she cleared one or two living rooms in Frau von Bissing’s old house next door, from which, however, the fairly comfortable furniture had been removed.  I wanted to cater for myself, but had to yield to her request to take over that responsibility.  Only furniture was lacking, and for this she ventured to apply to Frau Wesendonck, who immediately sent all she could spare of her household goods, as well as a cottage piano.  The good woman was also anxious that I should visit my old friends at Zurich to avoid any appearance of unpleasantness, but I was prevented from doing so by serious indisposition, which was increased by the badly heated rooms, and finally Otto and Mathilde Wesendonck came over to us at Mariafeld.  The very uncertain and strained attitude apparent in these two was not entirely incomprehensible to me, but I behaved as if I did not notice it.  My cold, which rendered me incapable of looking about for a house in the neighbouring districts, was continually aggravated by the bad weather and my own deep depression.  I spent these dreadful days sitting huddled in my Karlsruhe fur coat from morning till night, and addled my brain with reading one after another of the volumes which Mme. Wille sent me in my seclusion.  I read Jean Paul’s Siebenkas, Frederick the Great’s Tagebuch, Tauser, George Sand’s novels and Walter Scott’s, and finally Felicitas, a work from my sympathetic hostess’s own pen.  Nothing reached me from the outside world except a passionate lament from Mathilde Maier, and a most pleasant surprise in the shape of royalties (seventy-five francs), which Truinet sent from Paris.  This led to a conversation with Mme. Wille, half in anger and half with condemned-cell cynicism, as to what I could do to obtain complete release from my wretched situation.  Among other things we touched upon the necessity of obtaining a divorce from my wife in order to contract a rich marriage.  As everything seemed right and nothing inexpedient in my eyes, I actually wrote and asked my sister Luise Brockhaus whether she could not, by talking sensibly to Minna, persuade her to depend on her settled yearly allowance without making any claims on my person in future.  In reply I received a deeply pathetic letter advising me first to think of establishing my reputation and to create for myself an unassailable position by some new work.  In this way I might very probably reap some benefit without taking any foolish step; and in any case I should do well to apply for the post of conductor which was now vacant in Darmstadt.