rite to her, and
if from time to time I had not letters from her."

So he spoke to Legouve; and he sat down on a stone in a Paris street,
and wept. In the meantime, the old lady did not understand this
foolishness; she hardly tolerated it, and sought to undeceive him.

[Footnote 47: _Memoires_, II, 396.]

"When one's hair is white one must leave dreams--even those of
friendship.... Of what use is it to form ties which, though they
hold to-day, may break to-morrow?"

What were his dreams? To live with her? No; rather to die beside her; to
feel she was by his side when death should come.

"To be at your feet, my head on your knees, your two hands in
mine--so to finish."[48]

He was a little child grown old, and felt bewildered and miserable and
frightened before the thought of death.

Wagner, at the same age, a victor, worshipped, flattered, and--if we are
to believe the Bayreuth legend--crowned with prosperity; Wagner, sad and
suffering, doubting his achievements, feeling the inanity of his bitter
fight against the mediocrity of the world, had "fled far from the
world"[49] and thrown himself into religion; and when a friend looked at
him in surprise as he was saying grace at table, he answered: "Yes, I
believe in my Saviour."[50]

[Footnote 48: _Memoires_, II, 415.]

[Footnote 49: "Yes, it is to that escape from the world that _Parsifal_
owes its birth and growth. What man can, during a whole lifetime, gaze
into the depths of this world with a calm reason and a cheerful heart?
When he sees murder and rapine organised and legalised by a system of
lies, impostures, and hypocrisy, will he not avert his eyes and shudder
with disgust?" (Wagner, _Representations of the Sacred Drama of Parsifal
at Bayreuth, in 1882_.)]

[Footnote 50: The scene was described to me by his friend, Malwida von
Meysenbug, the calm and fearless author of _Memoires d'une Idealiste_.]

Poor beings! Conquerors of the world, conquered and broken!

But of the two deaths, how much sadder is that of the artist who was
without a faith, and who had neither strength nor stoicism enough to be
happy without one; who slowly died in that little room in the rue de
Calais amid the distracting noise of an indifferent and even hostile
Paris;[51] who shut himself up in savage silence; who saw no loved face
bending over him in his last moments; who had not the comfort of belief
in his work;[52] who could not think calmly of wh