that lived again.  There rose up soon before my mind a whole world of figures, which revealed themselves as so strangely plastic and primitive, that, when I saw them clearly before me and heard their voices in my heart, I could not account for the almost tangible familiarity and assurance of their demeanour.  The effect they produced upon the inner state of my soul I can only describe as an entire rebirth.  Just as we feel a tender joy over a child’s first bright smile of recognition, so now my own eyes flashed with rapture as I saw a world, revealed, as it were, by miracle, in which I had hitherto moved blindly as the babe in its mother’s womb.

But the result of this reading did not at first do much to help me in my purpose of composing part of the Tannhauser music.  I had had a piano put in my room at the Eiche, and though I smashed all its strings, nothing satisfactory would emerge.  With much pain and toil I sketched the first outlines of my music for the Venusberg, as fortunately I already had its theme in my mind.  Meanwhile I was very much troubled by excitability and rushes of blood to the brain.  I imagined I was ill, and lay for whole days in bed, where I read Grimm’s German legends, or tried to master the disagreeable mythology.  It was quite a relief when I hit upon the happy thought of freeing myself from the torments of my condition by an excursion to Prague.  Meanwhile I had already ascended Mount Millischau once with my wife, and in her company I now made the journey to Prague in an open carriage.  There I stayed once more at my favourite inn, the Black Horse, met my friend Kittl, who had now grown fat and rotund, made various excursions, revelled in the curious antiquities of the old city, and learned to my joy that the two lovely friends of my youth, Jenny and Auguste Pachta, had been happily married to members of the highest aristocracy.  Thereupon, having reassured myself that everything was in the best possible order, I returned to Dresden and resumed my functions as musical conductor to the King of Saxony.

We now set to work on the preparations and furnishing of a roomy and well-situated house in the Ostra Allee, with an outlook upon the Zwinger.  Everything was good and substantial, as is only right for a man of thirty who is settling down at last for the whole of his life.  As I had not received any subsidy towards this outlay, I had naturally to raise the money by loan.  But I could look forward to a certain harvest from my operatic successes in Dresden, and what was more natural than for me to expect soon to earn more than enough?  The three most valued treasures which adorned my house were a concert grand piano by Breitkopf and Hartel, which I had bought with much pride; a stately writing-desk, now in possession of Otto Kummer, the chamber-music artist; and the title-page by Cornelius for the Nibelungen, in a handsome Gothic frame—­the only object which has remained faithful to me to the present day.  But the thing