part in the opera, seemed to notice this, and kindly brought me a glass

of wine and a piece of bread. I was sorry that I was obliged to deprive

him of even his small part in the course of the year, for its loss

provoked such ill-treatment from his wife, that by conjugal tyranny he

was driven into the ranks of my enemies. When, after my flight from

Dresden in 1849, I learned that I had been denounced to the police by

this same singer for supposed complicity in the rising which took place

in that town, I bethought me of this breakfast during the Rienzi

rehearsal, and felt I was being punished for my ingratitude, for I knew

I was guilty of having brought him into trouble with his wife.

The frame of mind in which I looked forward to the first performance of

my work was a unique experience which I have never felt either before

or since. My kind sister Clara fully shared my feelings. She had been

living a wretched middle-class life at Chemnitz, which, just about this

time, she had left to come and share my fate in Dresden. The poor

woman, whose undoubted artistic gifts had faded so early, was

laboriously dragging out a commonplace bourgeois existence as a wife

and mother; but now, under the influence of my growing success, she

began joyously to breathe a new life. She and I and the worthy

chorus-master Fischer used to spend our evenings with the Heine family,

still over potatoes and herrings, and often in a wonderfully elated

frame of mind. The evening before our first performance I was able to

crown our happiness by myself ladling out a bowl of punch. With mingled

tears and laughter we skipped about like happy children, and then in

sleep prepared ourselves for the triumphant day to which we looked

forward with such confidence..

Although on the morning of 20th October, 1842 I had resolved not to

disturb any of my singers by a visit, yet I happened to come across one

of them, a stiff Philistine called Risse, who was playing a minor bass