Even if I had exposed myself without fear to such dangers, I was soon sobered down next morning by a summons from the police.  When, in addition to this, I recalled the singing of the Marseillaise, I was filled with the gravest fears.  After having been detained at the station a long time, owing to a strange misunderstanding, the upshot of it was that the inspector who was told off to examine me found that there was not sufficient time left for a serious hearing, and, to my great relief, I was allowed to go after replying to a few harmless questions concerning the intended length of my stay.  Nevertheless, we thought it advisable not to yield to the temptation of playing any more pranks beneath the spread wings of the double eagle.

By means of a circuitous route into which we were led by our insatiable longing for adventures—­adventures which, as a matter of fact, occurred only in our imagination, and which to all intents and purposes were but modest diversions on the road—­we at length got back to Leipzig.  And with this return home the really cheerful period of my life as a youth definitely closed.  If, up to that time, I had not been free from serious errors and moments of passion, it was only now that care cast its first shadow across my path.

My family had anxiously awaited my return in order to inform me that the post of conductor had been offered to me by the Magdeburg Theatre Company.  This company during the current summer month was performing at a watering place called Lauchstadt.  The manager could not get on with an incompetent conductor that had been sent to him, and in his extremity had applied to Leipzig in the hope of getting a substitute forthwith.  Stegmayer, the conductor, who had no inclination to practise my score Feen during the hot summer weather, as he had promised to do, promptly recommended me for the post, and in that way really managed to shake off a very troublesome tormentor.  For although, on the one hand, I really desired to be able to abandon myself freely and without restraint to the torrent of adventures that constitute the artist’s life, yet a longing for independence, which could be won only by my earning my own living, had been greatly strengthened in me by the state of my affairs.  Albeit, I had the feeling that a solid basis for the gratification of this desire was not to be laid in Lauchstadt; nor did I find it easy to assist the plot concocted against the production of my Feen.  I therefore determined to make a preliminary visit to the place just to see how things stood.

This little watering-place had, in the days of Goethe and Schiller, acquired a very wide reputation, its wooden theatre had been built according to the design of the former, and the first performance of the Braut von Messina had been given there.  But although I repeated all this to myself, the place made me feel rather doubtful.  I asked for the house of the director of the theatre.  He proved to be out,