with her.  I surveyed the panorama of our long years of association critically in my mind’s eye, beginning with that first stormy year of our married life, that had been so full of sorrow.  Our youthful days of worry and care in Paris had undoubtedly been of benefit to us both.  The courage and patience with which she had faced our difficulties, while I on my part had tried to end them by dint of hard work, had linked us together with bonds of iron.  Minna was rewarded for all these privations by Dresden successes, and more especially by the highly enviable position I had held there.  Her position as wife of the conductor (Frau Kapellmeisterin) had brought her the fulfilment of her dearest wishes, and all those things which conspired to make my work in this official post so intolerable to me, were to her no more than so many threats directed against her smug content.  The course I had adopted with regard to Tannhauser had already made her doubtful of my success at the theatres, and had robbed her of all courage and confidence in our future.  The more I deviated from the path which she regarded as the only profitable one, due partly to the change of my views (which I grew ever less willing to communicate to her), and partly to the modification in my attitude towards the stage, the more she retreated from that position of close fellowship with me which she had enjoyed in former years, and which she thought herself justified in connecting in some way with my successes.

She looked upon my conduct with regard to the Dresden catastrophe as the outcome of this deviation from the right path, and attributed it to the influence of unscrupulous persons (particularly the unfortunate Rockel), who were supposed to have dragged me with them to ruin, by appealing to my vanity.  Deeper than all these disagreements, however, which, after all, were concerned only with external circumstances, was the consciousness of our fundamental incompatibility, which to me had become ever more and more apparent since the day of our reconciliation.  From the very beginning we had had scenes of the most violent description:  never once after these frequent quarrels had she admitted herself in the wrong or tried to be friends again.

The necessity of speedily restoring our domestic peace, as well as my conviction (confirmed by every one of her extravagant outbursts) that, in view of the great disparity of our characters and especially of our educations, it devolved upon me to prevent such scenes by observing great caution in my behaviour, always led me to take the entire blame for what had happened upon myself, and to mollify Minna by showing her that I was sorry.  Unfortunately, and to my intense grief, I was forced to recognise that by acting in this way I lost all my power over her affections, and especially over her character.  Now we stood in a position in which I could not possibly resort to the same means of reconciliation, for it would have meant my being inconsistent in all my views and