cock flew after them, and noticing that everything was topsy-turvy, pounced upon the cheese with the eagerness of a craving long unsatisfied.  When I found myself being driven from the table by this chaos of fluttering wings, I was filled with a gaiety to which I had long been a stranger.  I laughed heartily, and looked round for the signboard of the inn.  I thereby discovered that my host rejoiced in the name of Homo.  This seemed a hint from Fate, and I felt I must seek shelter here at all costs.  An extraordinarily small and narrow bedroom was shown me, which I immediately engaged.  Besides the bed it held a rough table and two cane-bottomed chairs.  I arranged one of these as a washhand-stand, and on the table I placed some books, writing materials, and the score of Lohengrin, and almost heaved a sigh of content in spite of my extremely cramped accommodation.  Though the weather remained uncertain and the woods with their leafless trees did not seem to offer the prospect of very enticing walks, I still felt that here there was a possibility of my being forgotten, and being also in my turn allowed to forget the events that had lately filled me with Midi desperate anxiety.  My old artistic instinct awoke again.  I looked over my Lohengrin score, and quickly decided to send it to Liszt and leave it to him to bring it out as best he could.  Now that I had got rid of this score also, I felt as free as a bird and as careless as Diogenes about what might befall me.  I even invited Kietz to come and stay with me and share the pleasures of my retreat.  He did actually come, as he had done during my stay in.  Mendon; but he found me even more modestly installed than I had been there.  He was quite prepared to take pot-luck, however, and cheerfully slept on an improvised bed, promising to keep the world in touch with me upon his return to Paris.  I was suddenly startled from my state of complacency by the news that my wife had come to Paris to look me up.  I had an hour’s painful struggle with myself to settle the course I should pursue, and decided not to allow the step I had taken in regard to her to be looked upon as an ill-considered and excusable vagary.  I left Montmorency and betook myself to Paris, summoned Kietz to my hotel, and instructed him to tell my wife, who had already been trying to gain admittance to him, that he knew nothing more of me except that I had left Paris.  The poor fellow, who felt as much pity for Minna as for me, was so utterly bewildered on this occasion, that he declared that he felt as though he were the axis upon which all the misery in the world turned.  But he apparently realised the significance and importance of my decision, as it was necessary he should, and acquitted himself in this delicate matter with intelligence and good feeling.  That night t left Paris by train for Clermont-Tonnerre, from whence I travelled on to Geneva, there to await news from Frau Ritter in Dresden.  My exhaustion was such that, even had I possessed