reuth was
crowded by strange beings of low intelligence who bowed low before
Richard and found the weirdest meanings in his simplest melodies, and
who now write lengthy books about Richard's son Siegfried, yet we must
remember that the men who carried the news of Richard's true greatness
through Europe were Liszt, Buelow, Tausig, Jensen, Cornelius and many
smaller men--smaller men, but real musicians. Now, it was long since
pointed out that amongst his entourage Berlioz had no one possessing
an understanding of the art of music. Literary men and painters were
there in abundance: that is, they called on him; and because his
musical ideas or ideas for music seemed so vast they assumed that his
musicianship must be vast also; but those whose judgment would have
been trustworthy, and whose help worth having, stayed away altogether;
and when the celebrated personages had paid their call and gone their
several ways he was left to the flattery of a pack of incompetent
fools. This is not to exaggerate--it is simply to explain the
loneliness and sad tragedy of the end of Berlioz's life. He must in
his heart have known the bitter truth. One friend of Wagner's must not
be omitted--Lehrs. From him Wagner obtained what is called the middle
high-German _Saengerkrieg_, from which he extracted ere returning to
Germany the whole world of _Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_; and this we
must consider later. We may note that his youngest sister Caecilie,
Geyer's only child, had married Avenarius, who resided in Paris for a
time as agent for Brockhaus, the Leipzig publisher.

III

The whole story of this first visit to Paris is sordid, squalid,
miserable to a degree; and I don't know that we can be surprised. When
Wagner sailed from Pillau he had not had a single work of any
importance performed. Nay, more, he had not written a work of any
importance. _Die Feen_ had never been given; _Das Liebesverbot_ had
been given--under ridiculous circumstances and with the most
disastrous results; his symphony had been played, but by this time
score and parts had probably disappeared. Mendelssohn had received
them in Leipzig and never once referred to them. Anyhow, none of these
things were striking enough to have attracted much attention even in
Germany; and they certainly would have excited no interest in busy,
bustling Paris--the home of the Rossini and Meyerbeer opera, of
quadrilles, vaudevilles and the rest. But for the happy, or rather
unhappy, c