Part 10

Wagner reached out his arms and embraced him warmly.

"Ah! Here is Wotan!" said I--as Betz, the singer, entered.

"They are pasting up new posters!" cried he. "'The orchestra will be conducted by Herr Wülner, the rôle of Wotan will be sung by Herr Betz!' Ha! ha! do they really believe so? Well, the _Rheingold_ will neither be given on this Thursday, nor yet on Sunday, because I have to tender my farewell to you, Master; instead of signing my new engagement with the Royal Theatre of Bavaria, I am going this evening to Berlin, without even forewarning that wretch of a Perfall."

XX

The carriage which was to take Wagner to the railway station, on that Thursday the 2nd September, was to come for me before going to the "Old street of horses," and that before daylight, as the train left at 5.15 in the morning.

This time, all the disciples were to be permitted to see the Master--if only they waked early enough--and it was arranged that they should bid him farewell at the station where, in order not to attract attention, each one was to go singly.

The sun was hardly up and it was still chilly in spite of the season, on that high plateau where Munich is situated, when the old hackney coach, driven by a young coachman in blue and with a Tyrolean hat, carried me through the deserted city streets.

At the sound of the little bells and the wheels of the coach, Richter came down with the handbag; then came Wagner followed by Scheffer.

The Master looked very well, and the serenity of his humour seemed to have increased since the day before.

After we had started, I complimented him upon the strength of mind which sustained him in the face of this disaster, upon his magnanimous resignation, or perhaps, his Olympian scorn.

"Neither the one nor the other!" said he. "I have found my force in the belief that nothing essential, nothing of that which is closest to me, is hurt by this contention. My work, after the impression which it has made upon all of you, who understand me so intimately, must be just what I wished for it, and it soars away intact and free, from amidst the tawdry rubbish with which they try to disguise it.

"There is still another thing; it is that human malignity is no longer able to reach or hurt me deeply across the warm affection and the devotion which surround me. This certainty has comforted me. You see that even here, as I go away, I leave friends. You also know with what anxious tenderness they watch for my arrival at home! Truly, when I think of the past and the despair into which such circumstances as these would have plunged me then, when I had to bear my pain alone, I am able to feel almost joyous. Stop, look at the excellent Richter!" added he with a laugh, "he feels as I do, at twenty-eight he loses a position that a mature man would find it difficult to obtain, and, in place of the downcast countenance he ought to have, he shows us a sincere expression of the most complete satisfaction."

As a matter of fact, sitting opposite the Master, Richter, the golden, gazed at him with an air of utter beatitude.

"It is because Richter, he also," say I, "soars above the 'misérabilités,' he even carries a glorious palm, and, like the martyrs of the Coliseum, he sings thanksgivings while the lions are eating him."

"Verily," cried Richter, "I go, like them, straight to Heaven!"

That was true, for Wagner had "commanded" Richter to go and instal himself at Tribschen and await events there.

As we passed through the Maximilian Square, the Master called attention to a statue with which he was unfamiliar.

"Who is that?" asked he.

"It is Goethe, by Widnmann," responded Scheffer.

Wagner lifted his soft felt hat and said;

"It is a striking likeness!"

Then he added:

"I said that for fun, but I could very well have known Goethe, I must have been about fifteen when he died. However I should be pleased to make you believe that I am younger than Richter!'

"You are younger, Master; the Immortals have no age."

At the station we were all reunited. There were Villiers, Schuré, Servais and others. Wagner took them all cordially by the hand and Richter presented to him Franz Servais, whom he did not yet know, but of whom Liszt had often spoken to him.

The train was in readiness, the compartment chosen, some one arranged the luggage.

The Master, in a boyish humour, sat on the floor of the carriage, in the opening of the door, the step serving for his footstool. We ranged ourselves in a circle, which formed a rampart about him.

I always remember him so under his big gray felt hat, with his luminous blue eyes, his laughing mouth, so finely cut above the prominence of the wilful chin, and the neckerchief of yellow satin which he had crossed over his throat because of the chilly morning air.

He reminded us of our promise to go again and greet him at Tribschen on our way back to Paris. He also invited Servais to go when we did.

"Since they have chased me out of Munich," said Wagner "those who love me have nothing further to keep them here."

"We shall remain only a few days," said I, "to keep an eye on the enemy and to see whether, furious at his defeat, he may not prepare some vengeance."

"Bah! the conqueror saves himself and will be out of reach of his blows. But let it be well understood that I triumph in spite of myself, thanks to the generous defection of Betz, that I did not wish in any case to oppose the will of the King nor to prevent the representation. As for you, Richter, do not forget that I only give you time to go and embrace your mother and to strap your trunks ... and then you must come as fast as possible to Tribschen, where your room is prepared."

Without responding, Richter seized the Master's hand and kissed it.

The heartless whistle of the train interrupted us. We must separate. Wagner rose and stepped into the carriage; the door was closed. Still leaning from the window, he waved his grey hat; the wind scattered the locks of his hair about his splendid forehead, and, as long as the train remained in sight, we continued to signal with our handkerchiefs our latest farewell.

XXI

Richter's mother lived in a little village somewhere in the neighbourhood of Munich. He had planned to pass two or three days with her before his departure for Lucerne and had asked us to go with him; he would show us the country and we should be able to return to Munich the same day before the evening meal.

Villiers and Servais were of the party. We passed through pleasant and hilly country, picturesque with the villages of the suburban residents.

Frau Richter was a professor of singing, and it was the lesson hour when we entered the little house where she lived. Scales and trills of remarkable shrillness struck our ears, while we waited on the ground floor for the lesson to be over. The pupils passed us on their way out, and Richter conducted us up to the first floor and into the drawing-room, which was well furnished in a homelike and very German fashion.

Frau Richter was still a young woman, of attractive presence and manner. She spoke very regretfully of the events which had led to the dismissal of her son and she seemed to fear that he would never again find so good a position.

They brought us beer and bretzels. The talk languished a little at first, but when Richter told us that his mother had invented a method of singing which increased the power of the voice five-fold, she at once became interested and animated.

In fact, the pupils we had heard just before, had seemed to us to have a very unusual volume of tone.

Frau Richter's method consisted in throwing the sound, when singing, against the vault of the palate, which then forms a sort of drum increasing the resonance and the force of the tone to an astonishing degree.

Richter sat down at the piano and sang according to this method. His voice came out in tremendous volume, making the little house tremble to its foundation.

"One would say that his palate was made of tin," cried Villiers.

Our amiable hostess explained her discovery in detail, illustrating meanwhile in a voice that sounded like a bell.

Servais was the first one to grasp the idea, he tried it and produced some very wonderful bellowings.

"The curious thing about it," said Richter, "is that this system which my mother has found, does away with all fatigue. One is able to use the voice indefinitely in this way."

And Richter, to prove the truth of his assertion, sang us the entire third scene from the Rheingold.

When we had taken leave of our hosts, and were established in our railway carriage, we made our very best endeavours to sing from the palate, and the result was a scandalous cacophony.

XXII

In governmental circles, the intrigues continued around the incidents occasioned by the _Rheingold_, and the journalists who took their cue from there, did not cease to expend their servile ink in writing calumnious articles.

Finally Wagner was constrained to break the silence he had wished to keep, by publishing a short article in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ of Augsburg. He asserted once again in this article that he had never offered any opposition to the execution of his work. "I should certainly be very glad," he wrote, "if they would give up the idea of playing it under such deplorable conditions; but if they have decided to do so, I am entirely resigned and I have no intention of hindering the representations."

The news from Tribschen informed me that the Master was in good health, but the persistence of this animosity toward him had made even his strength of mind waver for a moment. Cosima had surprised him, one day, alone in his room, seated on a low chair and sobbing. But serenity and cheerfulness soon came back, he applied himself again regularly to the work which he had given up during those days of trouble, and then all went well.

At the theatre, Kindermann--"the singing gun"--as Villiers called him, because of his thundering voice--who interpreted the rôle of one of the giants, studied also that of Wotan, abandoned by Betz.

They had sent to Darmstadt in all haste, for the very skilful decorator, Brandt, and had requested him to patch up the scenery a little if possible, but he fled away more quickly than he came, declaring that he could not do anything with such horrors, that all would have to be remade.

The management did not give up, however, for the _Rheingold_ was announced for the 22nd September.

All the visitors who had come to Munich from different countries went away again, one after another. Liszt was the first to go. Without doubt he went secretly to Lucerne to see his daughter. Madame Muchanoff paid us a farewell visit. She herself would pass through Lucerne and make a visit to Wagner. Richter was already at Tribschen and Schuré would also go there.

We were the last to leave Munich, in spite of the anonymous letters which we daily received, threatening us with all sorts of retribution unless we went at once. "It is you who have prevented the theatre from carrying out the King's orders; you sare the servants of a traitor, traitors yourselves.... It is not to be endured much longer etc...." But we were not in the least disturbed.

Cosima told me that at one time in Munich she had received each day as many as four or five letters, in which they swore that she should die and called her "Prussian spy."

We remained, chiefly, to give time for the crowd of visitors then at Tribschen to leave, in order that we should not encumber that delicious retreat. Finally they called us back there with such a charming and affectionate insistence, assuring us that there was no longer any one there, that we suddenly decided to go.

And, face to the enemy, we quitted Munich, without resentment against that pretty city, where we had received from all those who were not in league with the Court faction, the most sympathetic and cordial welcome.

XXIII

This time, we arrived at Tribschen without being expected.

What joy to know and to return! to leap from the boat to the landing with its familiar little shed! to see again with our real eyes, the garden, the house, the lovely verdure, the air so blue....

Servais, who saw it all for the first time, was deeply moved. Villiers exulted.

I ran across the lawn, to be the first to arrive, Russ discovered us, he bounded forward, recognised me and greeted me with loud barks.

Then the children ran with cries of delight. In the salon, the sound of the piano, which I had heard, suddenly ceased. Wagner appeared at the top of the steps and Cosima followed him.

"Ah! there you are at last!" cried he, hurrying down the steps. "Without knowing any thing about it, I expected you to-day!"

And they embraced us, "Not," as Cosima declared, "like people of the world, but like peasants."

How much they had to tell us, and to re-tell chiefly about the nightmare of the _Rheingold_, which started up again when they thought it had subsided and was not yet at an end!

"You can imagine," Cosima said to me, "the mixture of terror and of joy that overwhelmed me, when, two days after the Master's departure, I received the dispatch announcing his sudden return. I waited for him at the station with the four children and the two dogs. At the sight of his radiant expression I was at once reassured, and the thought that I have something to do with the serenity he is able to preserve through all this trouble, makes me feel as happy as it makes me proud. The moments of weakness and discouragement which he passed through will not come any more, and Tribschen will remain the paradise that you know."

They had had one satisfaction all through these troubled days: the reconciliation with Liszt, or rather the end of the misunderstanding. Cosima confessed, in a low voice, that her father had come one evening, secretly; that he had passed a night at Tribschen, and that this had been a very sweet consolation. Now they had cut off all relation with the outer world again, and they lived for noble labour and domestic joys.

"Do you know how we were occupied when you arrived?" the Master asked me.

"You were making music, but it did not seem to me to be from Wagner."

"We were playing, Cosima and I, some of Haydn's symphonies, arranged for four hands, and that with the greatest pleasure. We have chosen the twelve English Symphonies, which Haydn wrote after the death of Mozart. For some time we have been following this study and it has given us some delightful hours."

Richter who had been at Tribschen for several days, had undoubtedly heard us arrive. He slipped into the drawing-room almost furtively, and saluted us with a restrained affection. In Wagner's presence, he always seemed ecstatic and overwhelmed. Cosima assured me that he had been so since his arrival. "One can hardly make him speak. He stays out of sight, for fear of being in the way, renders all sorts of services, goes to bathe the dogs, and, when he is present he stands off in a corner, where he listens and admires. Sometimes he starts away, suddenly, and one can hear him going down to the kitchen. Curious to know what he wanted to do there, one evening some one followed without his suspecting it, and heard him relating to the servants who listened to him open-mouthed, as to a sermon, all the beautiful things that Wagner had said!"

XXIV

To-day they presented to me Siegfried,--familiarly called "Fidi." He is a splendid baby, who weighs down the arms of his nurse. He does not talk yet, but he understands what is said to him. They ask him:

"Fidi, wie gross bist du?"

("Fidi, how big are you?")

He holds up his arms and shows, with a laugh full of dimples, that he is as high as the ceiling.

"Here," said I, "is a little being who has a very exceptional origin: descendant of Wagner and Liszt! What plans of future glory have they already formed for him?"

"That is all very vague," said the mother, laughing. "I have the ambition, first of all, to assure him a modest income, so he may always be sheltered from those terrible material worries, those shameful 'little miseries' from which I have suffered so cruelly. Then I should like to have him know something of surgery, so he could give help to anyone who was wounded, make a first dressing. I have so often been grieved by my own helplessness, when an accident has happened near me, that I wish to spare him that pain. Otherwise I shall leave him quite free. I should be glad, however, if he were to develop a taste for architecture."

"While we are waiting," added Cosima to me, "for the future architect to declare himself, do you feel yourself worthy, dear friend, of fulfilling a mission of confidence on his behalf? The nurse is just going to her dinner, which is served before ours; as for me, I have a bath ready which the sun has warmed; water heated in that way is very hygienic; I should like to take my plunge right away, in order not to be late for dinner. Now, this is the hour when Fidi is in the-habit of sucking a biscuit soaked in madeira; and there is no one to give it to him but you."

"Madeira at his age?" I am very much surprised, but I make no objection, being also very conscious of my own incompetence.

So here I am installed in the garden, near a little iron table, on the other side of the curtain of shrubbery which conceals Cosima's bath. Fidi is on my knees. Penetrated by the importance of my task, I soak the biscuit in the madeira, neither too much nor too little, and I am very careful not to soil the pretty embroideries of the robe. The baby eagerly sucks the golden wine and swallows the biscuit, without coughing or choking. I am not able to see, but behind the leaves I hear the splashing of the water and Cosima's voice encouraging me. All goes well, as long as the madeira and the biscuit last. But when there is nothing more, Fidi gives manifest signs of impatience. He twists himself about, in order to escape and slide to the ground. Shall I let him go? Never! I am not authorised. I do not even know if he can walk by himself. But he is quite determined to get down, kicks vigorously, and looks at me with frowning brows, as though he were astonished that I do not understand.

"Do hurry, Cosima, Fidi detests me and wishes to get away."

"No indeed, he loves you very much," cried the bather, "hold him tight."

So I hold him tight, but he has incredible strength and a persevering will. The struggle is painful and long ... finally, when they come to my aid, it becomes evident, too late, that the baby had serious reasons for his determination to get down.

XXV

This morning, Richard Wagner received a letter from the celebrated Pasdeloup....

It will be remembered, perhaps, that at this time, Pasdeloup had been director of the Theatre Lyrique for rather more than a year. He had, as a matter of course, produced at his theatre, first of all, one of Wagner's operas, and as he intended to play them all in succession he had begun with _Rienzi_, the first as to date. The work had been brilliantly mounted and well received, and the tenor, Monjauze, really remarkable in the rôle of the Tribune, had had a very decided success.

In his letter of to-day, Pasdeloup wrote that _Rienzi_ was to be given again at the re-opening of the theatre, but without Monjauze, who had unfortunately broken his arm.

They begrudged Monjauze and regretted exceedingly that it was necessary to replace him, for he alone, in that work, was equal to his part. Pasdeloup did not say who would take his place.

It was on the occasion of that first representation of _Rienzi_ at Paris, that, urged by Pasdeloup, I had written again to Wagner,--after the sending of the famous articles which had brought me the beautiful response from the Master, in which he explained to me certain scenes from the _Meistersinger_--I wrote this time, to ask if he would not like to come to Paris to stage and direct this work. He replied to me with a second letter, equally beautiful and very dignified, intended for publication and which appeared in _La Liberté_.

"Now that I know your writing," said I to Cosima, "I realise that the letter was by your own hand."

"That is true, Wagner wrote it first in German. I translated it into French, then we re-read it and corrected it together, and finally I copied it again."

"How wrong of us to have given you all that trouble! Pasdeloup was over-confident. If I had known about this retreat of Tribschen, how sacrilegious would have seemed to me the idea of asking the Master to leave it in order to please a Theatre Director!"

"You have seen by the affair of the _Rheingold_, that it is much better for Wagner not to mingle with the theatrical world. His first duty is to keep his creative faculty intact, but he is a 'fighter,' and is always tempted to throw himself into the fray."

"Now that I have the joy of knowing him, he will never again be called to battle by me!"

"He will return of himself, only too soon, for repose is not for him," added Cosima, sighing:

"I am curious to read again that letter that you wrote, you two, when you believed me to be a very serious old lady.... Do you remember your surprise, the first time you saw me to find me so different from what you had imagined? You would not be able to write in the same tone now."

"Certainly, the style of your articles does not at all resemble you, and we did not in the least foresee the _gamin_ that you are ... sometimes!"

"Neither could I have known that Wagner climbed trees...."

"But in any case the letter had nothing private in it; it was written to be published."

Cosima had kept a copy of the text, which she found, and we read it together:--

"MADAME,

"You are kind enough to ask me for some details relating to the time of my first stay in France, with the kindly intention of writing an article by their aid, the publication of which shall coincide with my arrival in Paris, which you believe to be near. While thanking you for the interest which you are so kind as to feel for me, permit me to say, Madame, that it is not my intention to go to Paris. I know that I have excellent friends, indeed, even numerous friends there, and I hope I do not need to assure you that I am capable of appreciating the value and the importance of the testimonies of sympathy of which I am the object. Nevertheless my presence and my participation in the representation that is being prepared might very well give rise to a misunderstanding. It would appear as though I were putting myself at the head of a theatrical enterprise with the intention of regaining by _Rienzi_ that which I have lost by _Tannhäuser_. At least it would undoubtedly be in this way that the Press would interpret my going. Whereas the stage setting of _Rienzi_ at the Théâtre Lyrique has only been an entirely personal question between M. Pasdeloup and me.