One fine morning I stole away from my friend in order to take my breakfast alone at the ‘Schlackenburg,’ and also to seize an opportunity of jotting down the plan of a new operatic composition in my note-book.  With this end in view, I had mastered the subject of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which, in accordance with my present mood, I soon transformed pretty freely into a libretto entitled Liebesverbot.  Young Europe and Ardinghello, and the strange frame of mind into which I had fallen with regard to classical operatic music, furnished me with the keynote of my conception, which was directed more particularly against puritanical hypocrisy, and which thus tended boldly to exalt ‘unrestrained sensuality.’  I took care to understand the grave Shakespearean theme only in this sense.  I could see only the gloomy strait-laced viceroy, his heart aflame with the most passionate love for the beautiful novice, who, while she beseeches him to pardon her brother condemned to death for illicit love, at the same time kindles the most dangerous fire in the stubborn Puritan’s breast by infecting him with the lovely warmth of her human emotion.

The fact that these powerful features are so richly developed in Shakespeare’s creation only in order that, in the end, they may be weighed all the more gravely in the scales of justice, was no concern of mine:  all I cared about was to expose the sinfulness of hypocrisy and the unnaturalness of such cruel moral censure.  Thus I completely dropped Measure for Measure, and made the hypocrite be brought to justice only by the avenging power of love.  I transferred the theme from the fabulous city of Vienna to the capital of sunny Sicily, in which a German viceroy, indignant at the inconceivably loose morals of the people, attempts to introduce a puritanical reform, and comes miserably to grief over it.  Die Stumme von Portici probably contributed to some extent to this theme, as did also certain memories of Die Sizilianische Vesper.  When I remember that at last even the gentle Sicilian Bellini constituted a factor in this composition, I cannot, to be sure, help smiling at the strange medley in which the most extraordinary misunderstandings here took shape.

This remained for the present a mere draft.  Studies from life destined for my work were first to be carried out on this delightful excursion to Bohemia.  I led my friend in triumph to Prague, in the hope of securing the same impressions for him which had stirred me so profoundly when I was there.  We met my fair friends in the city itself; for, owing to the death of old Count Pachta, material changes had taken place in the family, and the surviving daughters no longer went to Pravonin.  My behaviour was full of arrogance, and by means of it I doubtless wished to vent a certain capricious lust of revenge for the feelings of bitterness with which I had taken leave of this circle some years previously.  My friend was well received.  The changed family circumstances