I was all the more perplexed for a while, in the face of such dreadful ideas, by the fact that Bakunin in other respects proved a really amiable and tender-hearted man.  He was fully alive to my own anxiety and despair with regard to the risk I ran of forever destroying my ideals and hopes for the future of art.  It is true, he declined to receive any further instruction concerning these artistic schemes, and would not even look at my work on the Nibelungen saga.  I had just then been inspired by a study of the Gospels to conceive the plan of a tragedy for the ideal stage of the future, entitled Jesus of Nazareth.  Bakunin begged me to spare him any details; and when I sought to win him over to my project by a few verbal hints, he wished me luck, but insisted that I must at all costs make Jesus appear as a weak character.  As for the music of the piece, he advised me, amid all the variations, to use only one set of phrases, namely:  for the tenor, ‘Off with His head!’; for the soprano, ‘Hang Him!’; and for the basso continuo, ‘Fire! fire!’ And yet I felt more sympathetically drawn towards this prodigy of a man when I one day induced him to hear me play and sing the first scenes of my Fliegender Hollander.  After listening with more attention than most people gave, he exclaimed, during a momentary pause, ’That is stupendously fine!’ and wanted to hear more.

As his life of permanent concealment was very dull, I occasionally invited him to spend an evening with me.  For supper my wife set before him finely cut slices of sausage and meat, which he at once devoured wholesale, instead of spreading them frugally on his bread in Saxon fashion.  Noticing Minna’s alarm at this, I was guilty of the weakness of telling him how we were accustomed to consume such viands, whereupon he reassured me with a laugh, saying that it was quite enough, only he would like to eat what was set before him in his own way.  I was similarly astonished at the manner in which he drank wine from our ordinary-sized small glasses.  As a matter of fact he detested wine, which only satisfied his craving for alcoholic stimulants in such paltry, prolonged, and subdivided doses; whereas a stiff glass of brandy, swallowed at a gulp, at once produced the same result, which, after all, was only temporarily attained.  Above all, he scorned the sentiment which seeks to prolong enjoyment by moderation, arguing that a true man should only strive to still the cravings of nature, and that the only real pleasure in life worthy of a man was love.

These and other similar little characteristics showed clearly that in this remarkable man the purest impulses of an ideal humanity conflicted strangely with a savagery entirely inimical to all civilisation, so that my feelings during my intercourse with him fluctuated between involuntary horror and irresistible attraction.  I frequently called for him to share my lonely wanderings.  This he gladly did, not only for the sake of necessary