earsal for the day over, the company met in cafes
or beer-gardens and stayed there until it was time to move, in view of
the evening performance; any one who had a shilling spent it, while
those who had no shillings accepted their friends' hospitality and
hoped for the good time coming. Ladies quarrelled and then kissed;
gentlemen threatened to kill each other in honourable duel and sank
their differences deep in lager; one member left, another joined, some
members seemed to go on for ever; the great times were always coming
and never came. There was a company of this sort, the head being one
Bethmann, that wintered at Magdeburg and in the spring and summer
months played at Lauchstaedt and Ruedelstadt; and Wagner got the
position of conductor--the first real position he had yet held, for
the Wuerzburg office, after all, was a very small affair. He now went
out to conquer the world for himself; he became nominally
self-dependent, though neither now nor in the future was he really so.
He did the usual round with his troop, arriving at Magdeburg in
October; and arriving there, he tells us, he at once plunged into a
life of frivolity. This may be true, but we must again note the
stupendous industry which enabled him to finish _Das Liebesverbot_ in
so short a time. The most important event in Richard's life about this
time was his engagement to Minna Planer. She is said to have been a
handsome young woman; and, as impecuniosity is everlastingly an
incentive to marriage, of course he married her. In the meantime he
thoroughly enjoyed directing all the rubbish of the day, the season
ended and he returned to Leipzig.

The next season barely began before Bethmann, according to custom,
went bankrupt; the company disbanded, and Richard was left with a
young wife and nothing to live on. An engagement at Koenigsberg proved
no better; but at last the conductorship of the opera at Riga was
offered to him, so off he went eagerly, never dreaming, we may
suppose, of the extraordinary adventures that lay before him. Here in
outward peace he was to remain until 1839, rehearsing and directing
operas; but here also he was inspired with the first idea that showed
he had grown into the Richard Wagner we all know. He toiled away at
the theatre, nearly driving the singers crazy with the ceaseless work
he demanded from them; and to his family, when they had news from him
or of him, it must have seemed as though he had already one foot on
the lad