We spent the month of September together most pleasantly.  In the meanwhile I completed the libretto of Tristan und Isolde, and at the same time Hans made me a fair copy of each act.  I read it over, act by act, to my two friends, until at last I was able to get them all together for a private reading, which made a deep impression on the few intimate friends who composed the audience.  As Frau Wesendonck appeared to be particularly moved by the last act, I said consolingly that one ought not to grieve over it, as, under any circumstances, in a matter so grave things generally turned out in this way, and Cosima heartily agreed.  We also had a good deal of music together, as in Billow I had at last found the right man to play Klindworth’s atrocious arrangement of my Nibelungen scores.  But the two acts of Siegfried, which had only been written down as rough drafts, were mastered by Hans with such consummate skill that he could play them as if they had really been arranged for the piano.  As usual, I took all the singing parts; sometimes we had a few listeners, amongst whom Mme. Wille was the most promising.  Cosima listened silently with her head bowed; if pressed for an expression of opinion, she began to cry.

Towards the end of September my young friends left me to travel back to their destination in Berlin, and begin their married life like good citizens.

For the time being we had sounded a sort of funeral peal over the Nibelungen by playing so much of it, and it was now completely laid aside.  The consequence was, that when later on we took it out of its folio for similar gatherings, it wore a lack-lustre look, and grew ever fainter, as if to remind us of the past.  At the beginning of October, however, I at once began to compose Tristan, finishing the first act by the new year, when I was already engaged in orchestrating the prelude.  During that time I developed a dreamy, timorous passion for retirement.  Work, long walks in all winds and weathers, evenings spent in reading Calderon—­such was my mode of life, and if it was disturbed, I was thrown into the deepest state of irritation.  My connection with the world confined itself almost entirely to my negotiations with the music-seller Hartel about the publication of Tristan.  As I had told this man that, by way of contrast to the immense undertaking of the Nibelungen, I had in my mind a practicable work, which, in its demands upon the producer, confined itself, to all intents and purposes, to the engagement of a few good singers, he showed such keenness to take up my offer that I ventured to ask four hundred louis d’or.  Thereupon Hartel answered that I was to read his counter offer, made, in a sealed letter which he enclosed, only on condition that I at once agreed to waive my own demands entirely, as he did not think the work I proposed to write was one which could be produced without difficulties.  In the sealed enclosure I found that he offered me only one hundred louis d’or, but he undertook, after a period of five years, to give me a half-share in the proceeds, with the alternative of buying out my rights for another hundred louis d’or.  With these terms I had to comply, and soon set to work to orchestrate the first act, so as to let the engraver have one batch of sheets at a time.