During the months of January and February (1857) I completed the first act of Siegfried, writing down the composition in full to take the place of the earlier rough pencil draft, and immediately set to work on the orchestration; but I probably carried out Vaillant’s instructions with too much zeal.  Pursued by the fear of a possible return of erysipelas, I sought to ward it off by a repeated and regular process of sweating once a week, wrapped up in towels, on the hydropathic system.  By this means I certainly escaped the dreaded evil, but the effort exhausted me very much, and I longed for the return of the warm weather, when I should be relieved from the severities of this treatment.

It was now that the tortures inflicted upon me by noisy and musical neighbours began to increase in intensity.  Apart from the tinker, whom I hated with a deadly hatred, and with whom I had a terrible scene about once a week, the number of pianos in the house where I lived was augmented.  The climax came with the arrival of a certain Herr Stockar, who played the flute in the room under mine every Sunday, whereupon I gave up all hope of composing any more.  One day my friends the Wesendoncks, who had returned from wintering in Paris, unfolded to me a most welcome prospect of the fulfilment of my ardent wishes in regard to my future place of abode.  Wesendonck had already had an idea of having a small house built for me on a site I was to select for myself.  My own plans, elaborated with a deceptive skill, had been already submitted to an architect.  But the acquisition of a suitable plot of land was and still remained a great difficulty.  In my walks I had long had my eye on a little winter residence in the district of Enge, on the ridge of the hill that separates the Lake of Zurich from Sihlthal.  It was called Lavater Cottage, as it had belonged to that famous phrenologist, and he had been in the habit of staying there regularly.  I had enlisted the services of my friend Hagenbuch, the Cantonal Secretary, to use all his influence to secure me a few acres of land at this spot as cheaply as possible.  But herein lay the great difficulty.  The piece of land I required consisted of various lots attached to larger estates, and it turned out that in order to acquire my one plot it would have been necessary to buy out a large number of different owners.  I put the difficulties of my case before Wesendonck, and gradually created in him a desire to purchase this wide tract of land, and lay out a fine site containing a large villa for his own family.  The idea was that I should also have a plot there.  However, the demands made upon my friend in regard to the preliminaries and to the building of his house, which was to be on a scale both generous and dignified, were too many, and he also thought the enclosure of two families within the same confines might lead in time to inconveniences on both sides.  There happened to be an unpretentious little country house with a