at once on seeing me again.  We joked about this, and came to a closer understanding.  I was glad to see that he valued as much as I did the works of Schopenhauer, which had become known in the last few years.  He expressed his opinion of them with singular decision; he considered that German intellect was destined, either to complete deterioration, in conjunction with the national political situation, or else to an equally complete regeneration, in which Schopenhauer would play his part.  He left me—­soon to meet his terrible and not less inexplicable fate.  Only a few months later, after my return home, I heard of his mysterious death.  He was staying, as I said, at Brighton, for the purpose of putting his son, a boy of about sixteen, into the English navy.  I had noticed that the son’s obstinate determination to serve in this force was repugnant to his father.  On the morning of the day on which the ship was to sail, the father’s body was found shattered in the street, as the result of a fall from the window, while the son was found lifeless—­apparently strangled—­on his bed.  The mother had died some years previously, and there was no one left to give information as to the terrible occurrence, which, so far as I know, has never to this day been cleared up.  Franck had, out of forgetfulness, left a map of London behind on his visit to me; this I kept, as I did not know his address, and it is still in my possession.

I have pleasanter, though not entirely unclouded, recollections of my relations with Semper, whom I also met in London, where he had been settled for some time with his family.  He had always seemed to me so violent and morose when in Dresden that I was surprised and moved to admiration by the comparatively calm and resigned spirit with which he bore the terrible interruption to his professional career, and by his readiness to adapt his talent (which was of an unusually productive order) to the circumstances in which he was placed.  Commissions for large buildings were out of the question for him in England, but he set his hopes, to a certain extent, on the patronage accorded him by Prince Albert, as this gave him some prospects for the future.  For the time being he contented himself with commissions to design decorations for interiors and luxurious furniture, for which he was well paid.  He took to this work as seriously, from an artistic point of view, as if it had been a large building.  We often met, and I also spent a few evenings at his house in Kensington, when we invariably dropped into the old vein of strange, serious humour that helped us to forget the seamy side of life.  The report I was able to give of Semper after my return home did much to influence Sulzer in his successful attempt to get him over to Zurich to build the new Polytechnic.