paid us the high compliment of saying that I composed very well and that Reissiger conducted very well.  His Majesty asked us to repeat the last three stanzas only, as, owing to a painful ulcerated tooth, he could not remain much longer out of doors.  I rapidly devised a combined evolution, the remarkably successful execution of which I am very proud, even to this day.  I had the entire song repeated, but, in accordance with the King’s wish, only one verse was sung in our original crescent formation.  At the beginning of the second verse I made my four hundred undisciplined bandsmen and singers file off in a march through the garden, which, as they gradually receded, was so arranged that the final notes could only reach the royal ear as an echoing dream-song.  Thanks to my unexampled activity and ever-present help, this retreat was so steadily carried out that not the slightest faltering was perceptible either in time or delivery, and the whole might have been taken for a carefully rehearsed theatrical manoeuvre.  On reaching the castle court we found that, by the Queen’s kindly forethought, an ample breakfast had been provided for our party on the lawn, where the tables were already spread.  We often saw our royal hostess herself busily supervising the attendants, or moving with excited delight about the windows and corridors of the castle.  Every eye beamed rapture to my soul, as the successful author of the general happiness, and I almost felt amid the glories of that day as though the millennium had been proclaimed.  After roaming in a body through the lovely grounds of the castle, and not omitting to pay a visit to the Keppgrund which had been so dear to me in my youth, we returned late at night, and in the highest spirits, to Dresden.

Next morning I was again summoned to the presence of the director.  But a change had come over him during the night.

As I began to offer my apologies for the anxiety I had caused him, the tall thin man, with the hard dry face, seized me by the hand and addressed me with a rapturous expression, which I am sure no one else ever saw on his face.  He told me to say no more about these anxieties.  I was a great man, and soon no one would know anything about him, whereas I should be universally admired and loved.  I was deeply moved, and wished only to express my embarrassment at so unexpected an outburst, when he kindly interrupted me and sought an escape from his own emotion in good-humoured confidences.  He referred, with a smile, to the self-denial which had yielded the place of honour on so extraordinary an occasion to an undeserving man like Reissiger.  When I assured him that this act had afforded me the liveliest satisfaction, and that I had myself persuaded my colleague to take the baton, he confessed that at last he began to understand me, but failed altogether to comprehend how the other could accept a position to which he had no right.