ity. Every stroke of the pen
appeared ridiculous, inasmuch as he could no longer deceive himself in
regard to his prospects. He spent these May-days of 1849 in the open
air, basking in the sunshine of the awakening spring and casting away
all egoistic desires.

At this time the revolt in Dresden occurred, which, as a sort of
forlorn hope, he thought might be the beginning of a general uprising
in Germany. "After what has been said, who could be so blind as not to
see that I had now no choice but to turn my back upon a world, to
which no ties of sympathy bound me," he says, thus clearly indicating
his active participation in the May-revolt. It was not long before the
Prussians appeared, who had only waited the signal from Dresden. With
many others Wagner had to take to flight. A long, sad banishment
followed, but out of its necessities and privations rose the full man
and artist who restored to his nation its ideals, or rather first
established the ideal in its perfection. How this conception came
to him is disclosed in the last words he uttered about the men and
circumstances which combined to wickedly conceal it. It is as bold as
it is inspiring, and it is only the deepest solicitude for our most
sacred treasures that could give utterance to such words. It reads:

"There is nothing with which to compare the sensation of pleasure I
experienced after the first painful impressions had been overcome,
when I felt myself free, free from a world of tormenting, ever
unsatisfied desires, free from conditions in which my aspirations had
been my sole absorbing nourishment. When I, persecuted and proscribed,
was no longer bound by any considerations to resort to a deception of
any kind; when I had given up every hope and desire, and with
unconstrained candor could say openly and plainly that I, the artist,
hated from the bottom of my heart this hypocritical world which
pretended to be interested in art and culture; when I could say to it
that not one drop of artist's blood flowed in all its veins, that it
had not one spark of manly culture or manly beauty,--then for the
first time in my life I felt myself completely free, happy, and
joyous, although I sometimes did not know where to conceal myself the
next day that I might still breathe the free air of heaven."

These are words such as a Siegfried might have spoken. From this time
on he did not rest until the Siegfried-deed was done and the sword was
thrust into the dragon's he