hers of Leipzig or the greedy state officials of Saxony seems,
when all is said, very uncertain. In such times of stress and struggle
great crown officers, laudably anxious about their own interests and
the interests of their families, are apt to be rather careless, not to
say callous, about the smaller fry. However, pension or no pension,
with the aid of relatives and friends the Wagners pulled through.
Chief and best amongst the friends was Ludwig Geyer.

A few words must be said about him. Born in 1780, he was ten years
Carl Friedrich's junior. An actor who had taken up painting, or a
painter who had taken up acting, in both arts he had won at any rate a
local reputation. We know what was thought of his histrionic gifts
from more or less competent contemporaries; but what to think of his
paintings I do not know, for two reasons: I do not trust my own
judgment in such a matter, and if I did, I have never seen any of
Geyer's work. Of this, however, I am very sure: he cannot have been a
good painter unless nature had worked a miracle in sending a good
painter to Germany in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. German
artists of the period must be classified not as sheep and goats, but
as bad goats and worse goats. But if he was not a fine painter he was
what is better, or, at any rate, more useful to the rest of human
kind, a fine character: a noble, generous, self-sacrificing man. In
haste on hearing of Carl Friedrich's death he came from Dresden to
attend to the burying of the dead and the nourishing of the living.
The details of this first period of Richard's ill-fortune do not
amount to a great deal and are unimportant, since our subject is
Richard, and his mother, brother and sisters only so far as their
lives and characters influenced Richard. Albert, the eldest of the
children, was now fourteen years old; he was at the Royal school in
Meissen, and there he remained. Rosalie went to dwell with a friend of
Geyer's, a lady who lived at Dresden. Louise was adopted by a Frau
Hartwig, also at Dresden. Richard in his cradle remained with his
mother and the younger members of the tribe in Leipzig.

And so presently life began to move on as before, while the dead man
slept in his grave. But immediately fresh troubles came. Albert fell
dangerously ill and was threatened with a total breakdown of his
health; Richard was an ailing infant; and a change in the arrangements
of the theatrical company which provided Geyer with a