In order to recover from all the hardships and cares I had gone through, I now managed to obtain a special favour from the management, in the form of a three months’ leave, in which to improve my health in rustic retirement, and to get pure air to breathe while composing some new work.  To this end I had chosen a peasant’s house in the village of Gross-Graupen, which is half-way between Pillnitz and the border of what is known as ’Saxon Switzerland.’  Frequent excursions to the Porsberg, to the adjacent Liebethaler, and to the far distant bastion helped to strengthen my unstrung nerves.  While I was first planning the music to Lohengrin, I was disturbed incessantly by the echoes of some of the airs in Rossini’s William Tell, which was the last opera I had had to conduct.  At last I happened to hit on an effective means of stopping this annoying obtrusion:  during my lonely walks I sang with great emphasis the first theme from the Ninth Symphony, which had also quite lately been revived in my memory.  This succeeded!  At Pirna, where one can bathe in the river, I was surprised, on one of my almost regular evening constitutionals, to hear the air from the Pilgrim’s Chorus out of Tannhauser whistled by some bather, who was invisible to me.  This first sign of the possibility of popularising the work, which I had with such difficulty succeeded in getting performed in Dresden, made an impression on me which no similar experience later on has ever been able to surpass.  Sometimes I received visits from friends in Dresden, and among them Hans von Bulow, who was then sixteen years old, came accompanied by Lipinsky.  This gave me great pleasure, because I had already noticed the interest which he took in me.  Generally, however, I had to rely only on my wife’s company, and during my long walks I had to be satisfied with my little dog Peps.  During this summer holiday, of which a great part of the time had at the beginning to be devoted to the unpleasant task of arranging my business affairs, and also to the improvement of my health, I nevertheless succeeded in making a sketch of the music to the whole of the three acts of Lohengrin, although this cannot be said to have consisted of anything more than a very hasty outline.

With this much gained, I returned in August to Dresden, and resumed my duties as conductor, which every year seemed to become more and more burdensome to me.  Moreover, I immediately plunged once more into the midst of troubles which had only just been temporarily allayed.  The business of publishing my operas, on the success of which I still counted as the only means of liberating me from my difficult position, demanded ever-fresh sacrifices if the enterprise were to be made worth while.  But as my income was now very much reduced, even the smallest outlays necessarily led me into ever-new and more painful complications; and I once more lost all courage.