Read by the light of Mone’s Commentaries, the Wolsungasaga had a decided influence upon my method of handling this material.  My conceptions as to the inner significance of these old-world legends, which had been growing for a long time, gradually gained strength and moulded themselves with the plastic forms which inspired my later works.

All this was sinking into my mind and slowly maturing, whilst with unfeigned delight I was finishing the music of the first two acts of Lohengrin, which were now at last completed.  I now succeeded in shutting out the past and building up for myself a new world of the future, which presented itself with ever-growing clearness to my mind as the refuge whither I might retreat from all the miseries of modern opera and theatre life.  At the same time, my health and temper were settling down into a mood of almost unclouded serenity, which made me oblivious for a long time of all the worries of my position.  I used to walk every day up into the neighbouring hills, which rose from the banks of the Elbe to the Plauenscher Grand.  I generally went alone, except for the company of our little dog Peps, and my excursions always resulted in producing a satisfactory number of ideas.  At the same time, I found I had developed a capacity, which I had never possessed before, for good-tempered intercourse with the friends and acquaintances who liked to come from time to time to the Marcolini garden to share my simple supper.  My visitors used often to find me perched on a high branch of a tree, or on the neck of the Neptune which was the central figure of a large group of statuary in the middle of an old fountain, unfortunately always dry, belonging to the palmy days of the Marcolini estate.  I used to enjoy walking with my friends up and down the broad footpath of the drive leading to the real palace, which had been laid especially for Napoleon in the fatal year 1813, when he had fixed his headquarters there.

By August, the last month of summer, I had completely finished the composition of Lohengrin, and felt that it was high time for me to have done so, as the needs of my position demanded imperatively that I should give my most serious attention to improving it, and it became a matter of supreme importance for me once more to take steps for having my operas produced in the German theatres.

Even the success of Tannhauser in Dresden, which became more obvious every day, did not attract the smallest notice anywhere else.  Berlin was the only place which had any influence in the theatrical world of Germany, and I ought long before to have given my undivided attention to that city.  From all I had heard of the special tastes of Friedrich Wilhelm iv., I felt perfectly justified in assuming that he would feel sympathetically inclined towards my later works and conceptions if I could only manage to bring them to his notice in the right light.  On this hypothesis I had already thought of dedicating Tannhauser to