host and the mayor of the place (a relative of his, at whose table we ate our modest daily meal), it made, on the whole, little impression on me, as my attention was still fixed in great agitation on the events which were taking place on the Rhine, and particularly on the grand-duchy of Baden, which had been made forfeit to a provisional government.  When, however, the news reached me from this quarter also that the Prussians had succeeded in subduing a movement which had not at first seemed hopeless, I felt extraordinarily downcast.

I was compelled to consider my position carefully, and the necessity of conquering my difficulties helped to allay the excitement to which I was a prey.  The letters from my Weimar friends, as well as those from my wife, now brought me completely to my senses.  The former expressed themselves very curtly about my behaviour with regard to recent events.  The opinion was, that for the moment there would be nothing for me to do, and especially not in Dresden, or at the grand-ducal court, ’as one could not very well knock at battered doors’; ’on ne frappe pas a des portes enfoncees’ (Princess von Wittgenstein to Belloni).

I did not know what to reply, for I had never dreamt of expecting anything to come from their intervening on my behalf in that quarter; consequently I was quite satisfied that they sent me temporarily financial assistance.  With this money I made up my mind to leave for Zurich and ask Alex Muller to give me shelter for a while, as his house was sufficiently large to accommodate a guest.  My saddest moment came when, after a long silence, I at last received a letter from my wife.  She wrote that she could not dream of living with me again; that after I had so unscrupulously thrown away a connection and position, the like of which would never again present itself to me, no woman could reasonably be expected to take any further interest in my future enterprises.

I fully appreciated my wife’s unfortunate position; I could in no way assist her, except by advising her to sell our Dresden furniture, and by making an appeal on her behalf to my relatives in Leipzig.

Until then I had been able to think more lightly of the misery of her position, simply because I had imagined her to be more deeply in sympathy with what agitated me.  Often during the recent extraordinary events I had even believed that she understood my feelings.  Now, however, she had disillusioned me on this point:  she could see in me no more than what the public saw, and the one redeeming point of her severe judgment was that she excused my behaviour on the score that I was reckless.  After I had begged Liszt to do what he could for my wife, I soon began to regard her unexpected behaviour with more equanimity.  In reply to her announcement that she would not write to me again for the present, I said that I had also resolved to spare her all further anxiety about my very doubtful fate, by ceasing from communicating