Hereupon Minna herself appealed to me, and wrote me a positively heartrending letter, in which she openly confessed her infidelity.  She declared that she had been driven to it by despair, but that the great trouble she had thus brought upon herself having taught her a lesson, all she now wished was to return to the right path.  Taking everything into account, I concluded that she had been deceived in the character of her seducer, and the knowledge of her terrible position had placed her both morally and physically in a most lamentable condition, in which, now ill and wretched, she turned to me again to acknowledge her guilt, crave my forgiveness, and assure me, in spite of all, that she had now become fully aware of her love for me.  Never before had I heard such sentiments from Minna, nor was I ever to hear the same from her again, save on one touching occasion many years later, when similar outpourings moved and affected me in the same way as this particular letter had done.  In reply I told her that there should never again be any mention between us of what had occurred, for which I took upon myself the chief blame; and I can pride myself on having carried out this resolution to the letter.

When her sister’s engagement was satisfactorily settled, I at once invited Minna to come to Riga with her.  Both gladly accepted my invitation, and arrived from Dresden at my new home on 19th October, wintry weather having already set in.  With much regret I perceived that Minna’s health had really suffered, and therefore did all in my power to provide her with all the domestic comforts and quiet she needed.  This presented difficulties, for my modest income as a conductor was all I had at my disposal, and we were both firmly determined not to let Minna go on the stage again.  On the other hand, the carrying out of this resolve, in view of the financial inconvenience it entailed, produced strange complications, the nature of which was only revealed to me later, when startling developments divulged the real moral character of the manager Holtei.  For the present I had to let people think that I was jealous of my wife.  I bore patiently with the general belief that I had good reasons to be so, and rejoiced meanwhile at the restoration of our peaceful married life, and especially at the sight of our humble home, which we made as comfortable as our means would allow, and in the keeping of which Minna’s domestic talents came strongly to the fore.  As we were still childless, and were obliged as a rule to enlist the help of a dog in order to give life to the domestic hearth, we once lighted upon the eccentric idea of trying our luck with a young wolf which was brought into the house as a tiny cub.  When we found, however, that this experiment did not increase the comfort of our home life, we gave him up after he had been with us a few weeks.  We fared better with sister Amalie; for she, with her good-nature and simple homely ways, did much to make