A few days later came a second performance with the same cast.  My experiences on this evening were even more startling than on the former.  Evidently the first night had won me a few friends, who were again present, for they began to applaud after the overture.  But others responded with hisses, and for the rest of the evening no one again ventured to applaud.  My old friend Heine had arrived in the meantime from Dresden, sent by our own board of directors to study the scenic arrangements of the Midsummer Night’s Dream for our theatre.  He was present at this second performance, and had persuaded me to accept the invitation from one of his Berlin relatives to have supper after the performance in a wine-bar unter den Linden.  Very weary, I followed him to a nasty and badly lighted house, where I gulped down the wine with hasty ill-humour to warm myself, and listened to the embarrassed conversation of my good-natured friend and his companion, whilst I turned over the day’s papers.  I now had ample leisure to read the criticisms they contained on the first performance of my Fliegender Hollander.  A terrible spasm cut my heart as I realised the contemptible tone and unparalleled shamelessness of their raging ignorance regarding my own name and work.  Our Berlin friend and host, a thorough Philistine, said that he had known how things would go in the theatre that night, after having read these criticisms in the morning.  The people of Berlin, he added, wait to hear what Rellstab and his mates have to say, and then they know how to behave.  The good fellow was anxious to cheer me up, and ordered one wine after another.  Heine hunted up his reminiscences of our merry Rienzi times in Dresden, until at last the pair conducted me, staggering along in an addled condition, to my hotel.

It was already midnight.  As I was being lighted by the waiter through its gloomy corridors to my room, a gentleman in black, with a pale refined face, came forward and said he would like to speak to me.  He informed me that he had waited there since the close of the play, and as he was determined to see me, had stopped till now.  I excused myself on the ground of being quite unfit for business, and added that, although not exactly inclined to merriment, I had, as he might perceive, somewhat foolishly drunk a little too much wine.  This I said in a stammering voice; but my strange visitor seemed only the more unwilling to be repulsed.  He accompanied me to my room, declaring that it was all the more imperative for him to speak with me.  We seated ourselves in the cold room, by the meagre light of a single candle, and then he began to talk.  In flowing and impressive language he related that he had been present at the performance that night of my Fliegender Hollander, and could well conceive the humour in which the evening’s experiences had left me.  For this very reason he felt that nothing should hinder him from speaking to me that night, and telling me that in the Fliegender