d much to endure, and deserves all our pity;
but that her husband is not to blame in this matter, is shown by the
extremely happy and contented life he led with his second wife, Cosima,
the daughter of Liszt, who _did love_ and understand him."

It is a proverb that the woman who marries a genius marries misery, but
I think there are instances enough in this book to show that genius has
nothing to do with the case. Wedded happiness is a result of the lucky
meeting of two natures, one or both of which may be accidentally so
constituted as to be happy in the other's society without undue
restlessness. It would be just as easy to prove, by a multitude of
instances, that plumbers or bookkeepers, doctors, lawyers, merchants,
or thieves make poor husbands as to prove the same of musicians,
artists, poets, architects, or geniuses of any kind.

The truth of the matter is always overlooked: the geniuses are revealed
to the public in an intimacy non-historical characters are not
subjected to. But if you will turn from reading the pages of history,
biography, or memoirs, and take up any newspaper of the day, you will
doubtless be astounded to find how small a percentage of the divorces,
the murders, and other domestic scandals are to be blamed to the
possession of genius, unless, as one might well, you recognise a
special and separate genius for trouble.

Patience conquers all things, if one lives long enough, and at length
even Wagner's innumerable woes were solved by the appearance of a
veritable _deus ex machina_ let down from heaven. But Wagner was over
fifty when the tardy god arrived. It was in 1864 that he became the
idol and the pet of the young king, Ludwig II. of Bavaria, who sent a
courier ransacking Europe almost in vain for the fugitive, and, at last
finding him, dumbfounded him with fairy promises, presented him with a
villa, and treated him to a splendour few musicians have ever known,
except perhaps Lully, and Farinelli, who became the vocal prime
minister of the truly good king Ferdinand VI. of Spain. Wagner's
relations with Ludwig were of a sort which Mr. Finck euphemises as
"Grecian." This was seemingly not the only instance in his career; but
it brought him furious enmity as soon as he had found friendship.

Poor Minna never shared with Wagner his period of luxury. But it was of
such magnificence that his envious foes accused him of aiming to
dethrone religion from its throne, and substitute art as the Pope!