actions.  And then I found myself confronted by such hardness in the woman whom I had spoilt by my leniency, that it was out of the question to expect her to acknowledge the injustice done to myself.  Suffice it to say that the wreck of my married life had contributed not inconsiderably to the ruin of my position in Dresden, and to the careless manner in which I treated it, for instead of finding help, strength, and consolation at home, I found my wife unwittingly conspiring against me, in league with all the other hostile circumstances which then beset me.  After I had got over the first shock of her heartless behaviour, I was absolutely clear about this.  I remember that I did not suffer any great sorrow, but that on the contrary, with the conviction of being now quite helpless, an almost exalted calm came over me when I realised that up to the present my life had been built on a foundation of sand and nothing more.  At all events, the fact that I stood absolutely alone did much towards restoring my peace of mind, and in my distress I now found strength and comfort even in the fact of my dire poverty.  At last assistance arrived from Weimar.  I accepted it eagerly, and it was the means of extricating me from my present useless life and stranded hopes.

My next move was to find a place of refuge—­one, however, which had but little attraction for me, seeing that in it there was not the slightest hope of my being able to make any further headway in the paths along which I had hitherto progressed.  This refuge was Zurich, a town devoid of all art in the public sense, and where for the first time I met simple-hearted people who knew nothing about me as a musician, but who, as it appeared, felt drawn towards me by the power of my personality alone.  I arrived at Muller’s house and asked him to let me have a room, at the same time giving him what remained of my capital, namely twenty francs.  I quickly discovered that my old friend was embarrassed by my perfectly open confidence in him, and that he was at his wit’s end to know what to do with me.  I soon gave up the large room containing a grand piano, which he had allotted to me on the impulse of the moment, and retired to a modest little bedroom.  The meals were my great trial, not because I was fastidious, but because I could not digest thorn.  Outside my friend’s house, on the contrary, I enjoyed what, considering the habits of the locality, was the most luxurious reception.  The same young men who had been so kind to me on my first journey through Zurich again showed themselves anxious to be continually in my company, and this was especially the case with one young fellow called Jakob Sulzer.  He had to be thirty years of age before he was entitled to become a member of the Zurich government, and he therefore still had several years to wait.  In spite of his youth, however, the impression he made on all those with whom he came in contact was that of a man of riper years, whose character was formed.  When I was asked long afterwards whether I had ever met a man who, morally speaking, was the beau-ideal of real character and uprightness, I could, on reflection, think of none other than this newly gained friend, Jakob Sulzer.