shows how much he was wanted that
Luettichau yielded; he waived the twelve months' probation without
murmuring--a thing almost unheard of in the case of a German official,
a German court official. So on the 2nd of February, 1843, he was sworn
in "for life" as co-conductor with Reissiger; and promptly learnt that
he had to wear a livery like others condemned to penal servitude for
life. This was the least of his troubles.

Reissiger had been the slackest of theatre conductors, the slackest
of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the
misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though
these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man
who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary
stuff and the presumption to send it forth to a world already familiar
with Mendelssohn's trios, if not with Beethoven's, cannot have had a
spark of the genuine, enthusiastic musician in him. His waltz--known
as "Weber's last thoughts," in Germany and England as "Weber's last
waltz"--must have been the fruit of a lucky accident--or perhaps he
did have a moment of inspiration: it would be hard if that had not
come once in a lifetime to a man who wrote so much. The little thing
is certainly pretty. But it is not enough to counteract the impression
made by his trios on me, nor by his operas and conducting-work on
Wagner. The latter, indeed, was fond of telling anecdotes showing how
entirely indifferent Reissiger was to his work, so long as he got
through it somehow, reached home in good time, and drew his pay
regularly. One story, though well enough known, ought to be mentioned,
because it reveals the man whose duties Wagner had to share, and the
result of whose faults Wagner had to cure and efface. Wagner met
Reissiger on the river bridge one evening at nine o'clock, when the
opera ought to have been in full swing with Reissiger at the
conductor's desk. "Are you not conducting the opera to-night?" asked
Wagner--possibly in a fit of consternation, thinking it might be
_his_ night. "Have had it," Reissiger replied; "how's that for smart
conducting?" As long as they got through, Reissiger was content. Not
so Wagner. His first duty was to make the band a smart, clean-playing,
smooth-working machine; the players had to learn to follow his beat
and to obey his directions; and he at once met with opposition. The
bandsmen, like Reissiger, and in fact all officials who rega