Amid such circumstances of encouragement the composition of my Liebesverbot made rapid strides towards completion.  I intended the presentation of this piece for the benefit performance which had been promised me as a means of defraying my expenses, and I worked hard in the hope of improving my reputation, and at the same time of accomplishing something by no means less desirable, and that was the betterment of my financial position.  Even the few hours which I could snatch from business to spend at Minna’s side were devoted with unexampled zeal to the completion of my score.  My diligence moved even Minna’s mother, who looked with some uneasiness upon our love affair.  She had remained over the summer on a visit to her daughter, and managed the house for her.  Owing to her interference a new and urgent anxiety had entered into our relations, which pressed for serious settlement.  It was natural that we should begin to think of what it was all going to lead to.  I must confess that the idea of marriage, especially in view of my youth, filled me with dismay, and without indeed reflecting on the matter, or seriously weighing its pros and cons, a naive and instinctive feeling prevented me even from considering the possibility of a step which would have such serious consequences upon my whole life.  Moreover, our modest circumstances were in so alarming and uncertain a state that even Minna declared that she was more anxious to see these improved than to get me to marry her.  But she was also driven to think of herself, and that promptly, for trouble arose with regard to her own position in the Magdeburg theatre.  There she had met with a rival in her own speciality, and as this woman’s husband became chief stage manager, and consequently had supreme power, she grew to be a source of great danger.  Seeing, therefore, that at this very moment Minna received advantageous offers from the managers of the Konigstadt theatre in Berlin, then doing a splendid business, she seized the opportunity to break off her connection with the Magdeburg theatre, and thus plunged me, whom she did not appear to consider in the matter, into the depths of despair.  I could not hinder Minna from going to Berlin to fulfil a special engagement there, although this was not in accordance with her agreement, and so she departed, leaving me behind, overcome with grief and doubt as to the meaning of her conduct.  At last, mad with passion, I wrote to her urging her to return, and the better to move her and not to separate her fate from my own, I proposed to her in a strictly formal manner, and hinted at the hope of early marriage.  About the same time my brother-in-law, Wolfram, having quarrelled with the director Bethmann and cancelled his contract with him, also went to the Konigstadt theatre to fulfil a special engagement.  My good sister Clara, who had remained behind for a while amid the somewhat unpleasant conditions of Magdeburg, soon perceived the anxious and troubled temper in which her otherwise