elf
misunderstood with such violence by a man whom he had scarcely known,
and whose acquaintance now seemed not without value to him. I am still
touched at recollecting the repeated and eager attempts he made to
change my opinion of him, even 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 a fellow
creature; perhaps he also felt an infinitely tender misgiving of having
hurt me unconsciously. He who knows the terrible selfishness and
insensibility in our social life, and especially in the relations of
modern artists to each other, cannot but be struck with wonder, nay,
delight, by the treatment I experienced from this extraordinary man.

"Liszt soon afterward witnessed a performance of 'Rienzi,' at Dresden,
on which he had almost to insist, and after that I heard from all the
different corners of the world, where he had been on his artistic
excursions, how he had everywhere expressed his delight with my music,
and indeed had--I would rather believe unintentionally--canvassed
people's opinions in my favour.

"This happened at a time when it became more and more evident that my
dramatic works would have no outward success. But just when the case
seemed desperate, Liszt succeeded by his own energy in opening a
hopeful refuge to my art. He ceased his wanderings, settled down in
the small and modest Weimar, and took up the conductor's _baton_, after
having been at home so long in the splendour of the greatest cities of
Europe. At Weimar I saw him for the last time, when I rested a few
days in Thuringia, not yet certain whether my threatening prosecution
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 'Tannhaeuser,' and was astonished at recognising my
second self in his achievements. What I had felt in inventing the
music, he felt in performing it; what I wanted to express in writing it
down, he proclaimed in making it sound. Strange to say, through the
love of this rarest friend, I gained, at the moment of becoming
homeless, a real home for my art, which I had longed and sought for
always in the wrong place.

"At the end of my last stay at Paris, when ill, broken down, and
despairing, I sat brooding over my fate, my eyes fell on the score of
my 'Lohengrin,' totally forgotten by me. Suddenly I felt s