trying to perfect myself in the Swabian dialect, but, as I was amused to find, without the smallest success.  I had braced myself to meet the crucial moment early the next morning, when the policeman came into my room and, not knowing to whom the passports belonged, gave me three at random to choose from.  With joy in my heart I seized my own, and dismissed the dreaded messenger in the most friendly way.  Once on board the steamer I realised with true satisfaction that I had now stepped on to Swiss territory.  It was a lovely spring morning; across the broad lake I could gaze at the Alpine landscape as it spread itself before my eyes.  When I stepped on to Republican soil at Rorschach, I employed the first moments in writing a few lines home to tell of my safe arrival in Switzerland and my deliverance from all danger.  The coach drive through the pleasant country of St. Gall to Zurich cheered me up wonderfully, and when I drove down from Oberstrass into Zurich that evening, the last day in May, at six o’clock, and saw for the first time the Glarner Alps that encircle the lake gleaming in the sunset, I at once resolved, though without being fully conscious of it, to avoid everything that could prevent my settling here.

I had been the more willing to accept my friends’ suggestion to take the Swiss route to Paris, as I knew I should find an old acquaintance, Alexander Muller, at Zurich.  I hoped with his help to obtain a passport to France, as I was anxious not to arrive there as a political refugee.  I had been on very friendly terms with Muller once upon a time at Wurzburg.  He had been settled at Zurich for a long time as a teacher of music; this I learned from a pupil of his, Wilhelm Baumgartner, who had called on me in Dresden some years back to bring me a greeting from this old friend.  On that occasion I entrusted the pupil with a copy of the score of Tannhauser for his master, by way of remembrance, and this kind attention had not fallen on barren soil:  Muller and Baumgartner, whom I visited forthwith, introduced me at once to Jacob Sulzer and Franz Hagenbuch, two cantonal secretaries who were the most likely, among all their good friends, to compass the immediate fulfilment of my desire.  These two people, who had been joined by a few intimates, received me with such respectful curiosity and sympathy that I felt at home with them at once.  The great assurance and moderation with which they commented on the persecutions which had overtaken me, as seen from their usual simple republican standpoint, opened to me a conception of civil life which seemed to lift me to an entirely new sphere.  I felt so safe and protected here, whereas in my own country I had, without quite realising it, come to be considered a criminal owing to the peculiar connection between my disgust at the public attitude towards art and the general political disturbances.  To prepossess the two secretaries entirely in my favour (one of them, Sulzer, had enjoyed an excellent classical education),