I therefore returned to Leipzig without calling on my relatives, and there procured means for an immediate journey to Dresden.  On the way (the journey was still performed by express coach) I met Minna, accompanied by one of her sisters, already on the way back to Magdeburg.  Promptly procuring a posting ticket for the return journey to Leipzig, I actually set off thither with my dear girl; but by the time we reached the next station I had succeeded in persuading her to turn back with me to Dresden.  By this time the mail-coach was far ahead of us, and we had to travel by special post-chaise.  This lively bustling to and fro seemed to astonish the two girls, and put them into high spirits.  The extravagance of my conduct had evidently roused them to the expectation of adventures, and it now behoved me to fulfil this expectation.  Procuring from a Dresden acquaintance the necessary cash, I conducted my two lady friends through the Saxon Alps, where we spent several right merry days of innocent and youthful gaiety.  Only once was this disturbed by a passing fit of jealousy on my part, for which, indeed, there was no occasion, but which fed itself in my heart on a nervous apprehension of the future, and upon the experience I had already gained of womenkind.  Yet, despite this blot, our excursion still lingers in my memory as the sweetest and almost sole remembrance of unalloyed happiness in the whole of my life as a young man.  One evening in particular stands out in bright relief, during which we sat together almost all night at the watering-place of Schandau in glorious summer weather.  Indeed, my subsequent long and anxious connection with Minna, interwoven as it was with the most painful and bitter vicissitudes, has often appeared to me as a persistently prolonged expiation of the brief and harmless enjoyment of those few days.

After accompanying Minna to Leipzig, whence she continued her journey to Magdeburg, I presented myself to my family, but told them nothing of my Dresden excursion.  I now braced my energies, as though under the stern compulsion of a strange and deep sense of duty, to the task of making such arrangements as would speedily restore me to my dear one’s side.  To this end a fresh engagement had to be negotiated with Director Bethmann for the coming winter season.  Unable to await the conclusion of our contract in Leipzig, I availed myself of Laube’s presence at the baths in Kosen, near Naumburg, to pay him a visit.  Laube had only recently been discharged from the Berlin municipal gaol, after a tormenting inquisition of nearly a year’s duration.  On giving his parole not to leave the country until the verdict had been given, he had been permitted to retire to Kosen, from which place he, one evening, paid us a secret visit in Leipzig.  I can still call his woebegone appearance to mind.  He seemed hopelessly resigned, though he spoke cheerfully with regard to all his earlier dreams of better things; and owing to my own worries at that time about the critical state of my affairs, this impression still remains one of my saddest and most painful recollections.  While at Kosen I showed him a good many of the verses for my Liebesverbot, and although he spoke coldly of my presumption in wishing to write my own libretto, I was slightly encouraged by his appreciation of my work.