by me to celebrate the King’s arrival had found favour with the monarch.  As his antipathy to the proceedings was not so very serious, Luttichau must have seen that even the direct opposition of his Majesty could not have prevented the enterprise from being carried out privately, and that, on the contrary, the court would cut a sorry figure if the Royal Court Theatre (to which Weber once belonged) should assume a hostile attitude.  He therefore tried in a would-be friendly way to make me desist from furthering the cause, well knowing that, without me, the plan would fail.  He tried to convince me that it would be wrong to pay this exaggerated honour to Weber’s memory, whereas nobody thought of removing the ashes of Morlacchi from Italy, although the latter had given his services to the royal orchestra for a much longer period than Weber had done.  What would be the consequence?  By way of argument he said, ’Suppose Reissiger died on his journey to some watering-place—­his wife would then be as much justified as was Frau von Weber (who had annoyed him quite enough already) in expecting her husband’s dead body to be brought home with music and pomp.’  I tried to calm him, and if I did not succeed in making him see the difference between Reissiger and Weber, I managed to make him understand that the affair must take its course, as the Berlin Court Theatre had already announced a benefit performance to support our undertaking.

Meyerbeer, to whom my committee had applied, was instrumental in bringing this about, and a performance of Euryanthe was actually given which yielded the handsome balance of six thousand marks.  A few theatres of lesser importance now followed our lead.  The Dresden Court Theatre, therefore, could not hold back any longer, and as we now had a fairly large sum at the bank, we were able to cover the expenses of the removal, as well as the cost of an appropriate vault and monument; we even had a nucleus fund for a statue of Weber, which we were to fight for later on.  The elder of the two sons of the immortal master travelled to London to fetch the remains of his father.  He brought them by boat down the Elbe, and finally arrived at the Dresden landing-stage, from whence they were to be conducted to German soil.  This last journey of the remains was to take place at night.  A solemn torchlight procession was to be formed, and I had undertaken to see to the funeral music.

I arranged this from two motives out of Euryanthe, using that part of the music in the overture which relates to the vision of spirits.  I introduced the Cavatina from Euryanthe—­Hier dicht am Quell (’Here near the source’), which I left unaltered, except that I transposed it into B flat major, and I finished the whole, as Weber finished his opera, by a return to the first sublime motive.  I had orchestrated this symphonic piece, which was well suited to the purpose, for eight chosen wind instruments, and notwithstanding the volume of sound,