Schubert, on the contrary, was furious at my arrival; there was no longer any necessity for his speedy return to Riga, since the reopening of the theatre there had been postponed indefinitely.  Moreover, he had a special interest in remaining in Konigsberg, as he had conceived a passion for the prima donna there, which considerably lessened his desire to return to his wife.  So at the last moment he clung to his Konigsberg post with great eagerness, regarded me as his deadly enemy, and, spurred on by his instinct of self-preservation, used every means in his power to make my stay in Konigsberg, and the already painful position I occupied while awaiting his departure, a veritable hell to me.

While in Magdeburg I had been on the friendliest footing with both musicians and singers, and had been shown the greatest consideration by the public, I here found I had to defend myself on all sides against the most mortifying ill-will.  This hostility towards me, which soon made itself apparent, contributed in no small degree to make me feel as though in coming to Konigsberg I had gone into exile.  In spite of my eagerness, I realised that under the circumstances my marriage with Minna would prove a hazardous undertaking.  At the beginning of August the company went to Memel for a time, to open the summer season there, and I followed Minna a few days later.  We went most of the way by sea, and crossed the Kurische Haff in a sailing vessel in bad weather with the wind against us—­one of the most melancholy crossings I have ever experienced.  As we passed the thin strip of sand that divides this bay from the Baltic Sea, the castle of Runsitten, where Hoffmann laid the scene of one of his most gruesome tales (Das Majorat), was pointed out to me.  The fact that in this desolate neighbourhood, of all places in the world, I should after so long a lapse of time be once more brought in contact with the fantastic impressions of my youth, had a singular and depressing effect on my mind.  The unhappy sojourn in Memel, the lamentable role I played there, everything in short, contributed to make me find my only consolation in Minna, who, after all, was the cause of my having placed myself in this unpleasant position.  Our friend Abraham followed us from Konigsberg and did all kinds of queer things to promote my interests, and was obviously anxious to put the director and conductor at variance with each other.  One day Schubert, in consequence of a dispute with Hubsch on the previous night, actually declared himself too unwell to attend a rehearsal of Euryanthe, in order to force the manager to summon me suddenly to take his place.  In doing this my rival maliciously hoped that as I was totally unprepared to conduct this difficult opera, which was seldom played, I would expose my incapacity in a manner most welcome to his hostile intentions.  Although I had never really had a score of Euryanthe before me, his wish was so little gratified, that he elected to get well for