en before he knew any of my works. He acted
not from any artistic sympathy, but led by the purely human wish of
discontinuing a casual disharmony between himself and another being;
perhaps he also felt an infinitely tender misgiving of having really
hurt me unconsciously. He who knows the selfishness and terrible
insensibility of our social life, and especially of the relations
of modern artists to each other, can not be struck with wonder, nay,
delight, with the treatment I received from this remarkable man.... At
Weimar I saw him for the last time, when I was resting for a few days in
Thuringia, uncertain whether the threatening persecution would compel me
to continue my flight from Germany. The very day when my personal
danger became a certainty, I saw Liszt conducting a rehearsal of my
'Tannhouser,' and was astonished at recognizing my second self in
his achievement. What I had felt in inventing this music, he felt in
performing it; what I had wanted to express in writing it down, he
expressed in making it sound. Strange to say, through the love of this
rarest friend, I gained, at the very moment of becoming homeless, a real
home for my art which I had hitherto longed for and sought for in
the wrong place.... At the end of my last stay in Paris, when, ill,
miserable, and despairing, I sat brooding over my fate, my eye fell on
the score of my 'Lohengrin,' which I had totally forgotten. Suddenly I
felt something like compassion that this music should never sound from
off the death-pale paper. Two words I wrote to Liszt; the answer was
that preparation was being made for the performance on the grandest
scale which the limited means of Weimar permitted. Everything that
man or circumstances could do was done to make the work understood....
Errors and misconceptions impeded the desired success. What was to be
done to supply what was wanted, so as to further the true understanding
on all sides and, with it, the ultimate success of the work? Liszt saw
it at once, and did it. He gave to the public his own impression of the
work in a manner the convincing eloquence and overpowering efficacy of
which remain unequaled. Success was his reward, and with this success he
now approaches me, saying, 'Behold, we have come so far! Now create us a
new work, that we may go still farther.'"

Liszt remained at Weimar for ten years, when he resigned his place
on account of certain narrow jealousies and opposition offered to his
plans. Since