fond, was favoured by continuous fine weather.  I devoted all my leisure, apart from my lonely walks, to making a fair copy of that part of the Walkure which was fully scored, and also took up my favourite reading again—­the study of Schopenhauer.  I had the pleasure of receiving a charming letter from Berlioz, together with Les Soirees de l’Orchestre, his new book, which I found inspiriting to read, although the author’s taste for the grotesque was as foreign to me here as in his compositions.  Here, too, I met young Robert von Hornstein again, who proved himself a pleasant and intelligent companion.  I was particularly interested in his quick and evidently successful plunge into the study of Schopenhauer.  He informed me that he proposed to settle for some time in Zurich, where Karl Ritter, too, had decided to take permanent winter quarters for his young wife and himself.

In the middle of August we returned to Zurich ourselves, and I was able to devote myself steadily to completing the instrumentation of the Walkure, while my relations with former acquaintances remained much the same.  From outside I received news of the steady persistence with which my Tannhauser was, little by little, being propagated in German theatres.  Lohengrin, too, followed in its steps, though without a first meeting with an entirely favourable reception.  Franz Dingelstedt, who was at the time manager of the court theatre at Munich, undertook to introduce Tannhauser there, although, thanks to Lachner, the place was not prepossessed in my favour.  He seemed to have managed it fairly well; its success, however, according to him, was not so great as to allow of my promised fee being punctually paid.  But my income, owing to the conscientious stewardship of my friend Sulzer, was now sufficient to permit me to work without anxiety on that account.  But I met with a new vexation when colder weather set in.  I suffered from innumerable attacks of erysipelas during the whole winter, each fresh attack (in consequence of some tiny error of diet, or of the least cold) being attended by violent pain.  It was obviously the result of the ill effects of the London climate.  What pained me most was the frequent interruption of my work on this account.  The most I could do was to read when the illness was taking its course.  Burnouff’s Introduction a l’Histoire du Bouddhisme interested me most among my books, and I found material in it for a dramatic poem, which has stayed in my mind ever since, though only vaguely sketched.  I may still perhaps work it out.  I gave it the title of Die Sieger.  It was founded on the simple legend of a Tschantala girl, who is received into the dignified order of beggars known as Clakyamouni, and, through her exceedingly passionate and purified love for Ananda, the chief disciple of Buddha, herself gains merit.  Besides the underlying beauty of this simple material, a curious relation between it and the subsequent development of my musical experience influenced my selection.