For to the mind of Buddha the past life (in a former incarnation) of every being who appears before him stands revealed as plainly as the present; and this simple story has its significance, as showing that the past life of the suffering hero and heroine is bound up with the immediate present in this life.  I saw at once that the continuous reminiscence in the music of this double existence might perfectly well be presented to the emotions, and I decided accordingly to keep in prospect the working out of this poem as a particularly congenial task.

I had thus two new subjects stamped on my imagination, Tristan and Die Sieger; with these I was constantly occupied from this time onwards, together with my great work, the Nibelungen, the unfinished portion of which was still of gigantic dimensions.  The more these projects absorbed me, the more did I writhe with impatience at the perpetual interruptions of my work by these loathsome attacks of illness.  About this time Liszt proposed to pay me a visit that had been postponed in the summer, but I had to ask him not to come, as I could not be certain, after my late experiences, of not being tied to a sick-bed during the few days he would be able to give me.  Thus I spent the winter, calm and resigned in my productive moments, but moody and irritable towards the outside world, and consequently a source of some anxiety to my friends.  I was glad, however, when Karl Ritter’s arrival in Zurich allowed him to become more intimate with me again.  By his selecting Zurich as a settled home, for the winter months, at any rate, he showed his devotion to me in a way that did me good, and wiped out more than one bad impression.  Hornstein had actually managed to come too, but could not stay.  He declared he was so nervous that he could not touch a note of the piano, and made no attempt to deny that the fact of his mother’s having died insane made him very much afraid of going mad himself.  Although this in a way made him interesting, his intellectual gifts were marred by such weakness of character, that we were soon reduced to thinking him fairly hopeless, and we were not inconsolable when he suddenly left Zurich.

My circle had gained considerably of late by the addition of a new acquaintance, Gottfried Keller, a native of Zurich, who had just returned to the welcoming arms of his affectionate fellow-townsmen from Germany, where his writings had brought him some fame.  Several of his works—­in particular, a longish novel, Der Grune Heinrich—­had been recommended to me in favourable though not exaggerated terms by Sulzer.  I was therefore surprised to find him a person of extraordinarily shy and awkward demeanour.  Every one felt anxious about his prospects on first becoming acquainted with him, and it was indeed this question of his future that was the difficulty.  Although everything he wrote showed great original talent, it was obvious at once that they were merely efforts in the direction of artistic development, and