, 1883, and attended two crowded
performances of Wagner's last work, _Parsifal_. In the morning I went
into the beautiful gardens of the Neue Schloss. On either side of a
lake, upon which float a couple of swans and innumerable water-lilies,
the long parklike avenue of trees are vocal with wild doves, and the
robin is heard in the adjoining thickets. At my approach the sweet song
ceases abruptly, and the startled bird flies out, scattering the pale
petals of the wild roses upon my path. I follow a stream of people on
foot, as they move down the left-hand avenue in the garden of the Neue
Schloss, which adjoins Wagner's own grounds.

Some are going--some are coming. Presently I see an opening in the
bushes on my left; the path leads me to a clump of evergreens. I follow
it, and come suddenly on the great composer's grave. All about the green
square mound the trees are thick--laurel, fir, and yew. The shades fall
funereally across the immense gray granite slab; but over the dark
foliage the sky is bright blue, and straight in front of me, above the
low bushes, I can see the bow-windows of the dead master's study--where
I spent with him one delightful evening in 1876.

I can see, too, the jet of water that he loved playing high above the
hedge of evergreen. It lulls me with its sound. "Wahnfried! Wahnfried!"
it seems to murmur. It was the word written above the master's
house--the word he most loved--the word his tireless spirit most
believed in. How shall I render it? "Dream-life! dream-life! Earth's
illusion of joy!"

Great spirit! thy dream-life here is past, and, face to face with truth,
"rapt from the fickle and the frail," for thee the illusion has
vanished! Mayest thou also know the fulness of joy in the unbroken and
serene activities of the eternal Reality!

I visited the grave twice. There is nothing written on the granite slab.
There were never present less than twenty persons, and a constant
stream of pilgrims kept coming and going.

One gentle token of the master's pitiful and tender regard for the
faithful dumb animals he so loved lies but a few feet off in the same
garden, and not far from his own grave.

Upon a mossy bank, surrounded with evergreens, is a small marble slab,
with this inscription to his favorite dog:

"_Here lies in peace 'Wahnfried's' faithful watcher and friend--the good
and beautiful Mark_" (der gute, schoene Mark)!

I returned, too, to Wagner's tomb, plucked a branch of the fir-tr