When I asked the few intimate friends I had their opinion on this point, I elicited much valuable information.  Among these friends I must mention, in the first place, Hermann Franck, whom I found again.  He had lately settled in Berlin, and did much to encourage me.  I spent the most enjoyable part of those sad two months in his company, of which, however, I had but too little.  Our conversation generally turned upon reminiscences of the old days, and on to topics which had no connection with the theatre, so that I was almost ashamed to trouble him with my complaints on this subject, especially as they concerned my worries about a work which I could not pretend was of any practical importance to the stage.  He for his part soon arrived at the conclusion that it had been foolish of me to choose my Rienzi for this occasion, as it was an opera which appealed merely to the general public, in preference to my Tannhauser, which might have educated a party in Berlin useful to my higher aims.  He maintained that the very nature of this work would have aroused a fresh interest in the drama in the minds of people who, like himself, were no longer to be counted among regular theatre-goers, precisely because they had given up all hope of ever finding any nobler ideals of the stage.

The curious information as to the character of Berlin art in other respects, which Werder gave me from time to time, was most discouraging.  With regard to the public, he told me once that at a performance of an unknown work, it was quite useless for me to expect a single member of the audience from the stalls to the gallery to take his seat with any better object in view than to pick as many holes as possible in the production.  Although Werder did not wish to discourage me in any of my endeavours, he felt himself obliged to warn me continually not to expect anything above the average from the cultured society of Berlin.  He liked to see proper respect paid to the really considerable gifts of the King; and when I asked him how he thought the latter would receive my ideas about the ennobling of opera, he answered, after having listened attentively to a long and fiery tirade on my part:  ‘The King would say to you, “Go and consult Stawinsky!"’ This was the opera manager, a fat, smug creature who had grown rusty in following out the most jog-trot routine.  In short, everything I learned was calculated to discourage me.  I called on Bernhard Marx, who some years ago had shown a kindly interest in my Fliegender Hollander, and was courteously received by him.  This man, who in his earlier writings and musical criticisms had seemed to me filled with a fire of energy, now struck me as extraordinarily limp and listless when I saw him by the side of his young wife, who was radiantly and bewitchingly beautiful.  From his conversation I soon learned that he also had abandoned even the remotest hope of success for any efforts directed towards the object so dear to both our hearts, on account