First of all I had to accompany her on a trip to Leipzig, where she was giving a concert for her mother’s benefit, which she thought to make particularly attractive by including in its programme two selections from Rienzi—­the aria of Adriano and the hero’s prayer (the latter sung by Tichatschek), and both under my personal conductorship.  Mendelssohn, who was also on very friendly terms with her, had been enticed to this concert too, and produced his overture to Ruy Blas, then quite new.  It was during the two busy days spent on this occasion in Leipzig that I first came into close contact with him, all my previous knowledge of him having been limited to a few rare and altogether profitless visits.  At the house of my brother-in-law, Fritz Brockhaus, he and Devrient gave us a good deal of music, he playing her accompaniment to a number of Schubert’s songs.  I here became conscious of the peculiar unrest and excitement with which this master of music, who, though still young, had already reached the zenith of his fame and life’s work, observed or rather watched me.  I could see clearly that he thought but little of a success in opera, and that merely in Dresden.  Doubtless I seemed in his eyes one of a class of musicians to whom he attached no value, and with whom he proposed to have no intercourse.  Nevertheless my success had certain characteristic features, which gave it a more or less alarming aspect.  Mendelssohn’s most ardent desire for a long time past had been to write a successful opera, and it was possible he now felt annoyed that, before he had succeeded in doing so, a triumph of this nature should suddenly be thrust into his face with blunt brutality, and based upon a style of music which he might feel justified in regarding as poor.  He probably found it no less exasperating that Devrient, whose gifts he acknowledged, and who was his own devoted admirer, should now so openly and loudly sound my praises.  These thoughts were dimly shaping themselves in my mind, when Mendelssohn, by a very remarkable statement, drove me, almost with violence, to adopt this interpretation.  On our way home together, after the joint concert rehearsal, I was talking very warmly on the subject of music.  Although by no means a talkative man, he suddenly interrupted me with curiously hasty excitement by the assertion that music had but one great fault, namely, that more than any other art it stimulated not only our good, but also our evil qualities, such, for instance, as jealousy.  I blushed with shame to have to apply this speech to his own feelings towards me; for I was profoundly conscious of my innocence of ever having dreamed, even in the remotest degree, of placing my own talents or performances as a musician in comparison with his.  Yet, strange to say, at this very concert he showed himself in a light by no means calculated to place him beyond all possibility of comparison with myself.  A rendering of his Hebrides Overture would have placed him so immeasurably