People offered to help me in finding a lodging, and a young actor whom I had chanced to know at Wurzburg undertook to be my guide in the matter.  While he was taking me to the best lodging he knew, he told me that presently he would do me the kindness of making me the housemate of the prettiest and nicest girl to be found in the place at the time.  She was the junior lead of the company, Mademoiselle Minna Planer, of whom doubtless I had already heard.

As luck would have it, the promised damsel met us at the door of the house in question.  Her appearance and bearing formed the most striking contrast possible to all the unpleasant impressions of the theatre which it had been my lot to receive on this fateful morning.  Looking very charming and fresh, the young actress’s general manner and movements were full of a certain majesty and grave assurance which lent an agreeable and captivating air of dignity to her otherwise pleasant expression.  Her scrupulously clean and tidy dress completed the startling effect of the unexpected encounter.  After I had been introduced to her in the hall as the new conductor, and after she had done regarding with astonishment the stranger who seemed so young for such a title, she recommended me kindly to the landlady of the house, and begged that I might be well looked after; whereupon she walked proudly and serenely across the street to her rehearsal.

I engaged a room on the spot, agreed to Don Juan for Sunday, regretted greatly that I had not brought my luggage with me from Leipzig, and hastened to return thither as quickly as possible in order to get back to Lauchstadt all the sooner.  The die was cast.  The serious side of life at once confronted me in the form of significant experiences.  At Leipzig I had to take a furtive leave of Laube.  At the instance of Prussia he had been warned off Saxon soil, and he half guessed at the meaning which was to be attached to this move.  The time of undisguised reaction against the Liberal movement of the early ’thirties had set in:  the fact that Laube was concerned in no sort of political work, but had devoted himself merely to literary activity, always aiming simply at aesthetic objects, made the action of the police quite incomprehensible to us for the time being.  The disgusting ambiguity with which the Leipzig authorities answered all his questions as to the cause of his expulsion soon gave him the strongest suspicions as to what their intentions towards him actually were.

Leipzig, as the scene of his literary labours, being inestimably precious, it mattered greatly to him to keep within reach of it.  My friend Apel owned a fine estate on Prussian soil, within but a few hours’ distance of Leipzig, and we conceived the wish of seeing Laube hospitably harboured there.  My friend, who without infringing the legal stipulations was in a position to give the persecuted man a place of refuge, immediately assented, and with great readiness,