, that you would
like to attend the Bayreuth opera two months and a half later, you must
use the cable and get about it immediately or you will get no seats,
and you must cable for lodgings, too. Then if you are lucky you will
get seats in the last row and lodgings in the fringe of the town. If
you stop to write you will get nothing. There were plenty of people
in Nuremberg when we passed through who had come on pilgrimage without
first securing seats and lodgings. They had found neither in Bayreuth;
they had walked Bayreuth streets a while in sorrow, then had gone to
Nuremberg and found neither beds nor standing room, and had walked those
quaint streets all night, waiting for the hotels to open and empty their
guests into trains, and so make room for these, their defeated brethren
and sisters in the faith. They had endured from thirty to forty hours'
railroading on the continent of Europe--with all which that implies of
worry, fatigue, and financial impoverishment--and all they had got
and all they were to get for it was handiness and accuracy in kicking
themselves, acquired by practice in the back streets of the two
towns when other people were in bed; for back they must go over
that unspeakable journey with their pious mission unfulfilled. These
humiliated outcasts had the frowsy and unbrushed and apologetic look of
wet cats, and their eyes were glazed with drowsiness, their bodies were
adroop from crown to sole, and all kind-hearted people refrained from
asking them if they had been to Bayreuth and failed to connect, as
knowing they would lie.

We reached here (Bayreuth) about mid-afternoon of a rainy Saturday. We
were of the wise, and had secured lodgings and opera seats months in
advance.

I am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about
the operas and deliver judgment upon their merits. The little
children of Bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader
intelligence than I. I only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the
operas, pilgrims able to appreciate them and enjoy them. What I write
about the performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the
public as merely a cat's view of a king, and not of didactic value.

Next day, which was Sunday, we left for the opera-house--that is to say,
the Wagner temple--a little after the middle of the afternoon. The
great building stands all by itself, grand and lonely, on a high ground
outside the town. We were warned that if