Surely, there can be nothing tenderer than his allusion to her in
another letter to Liszt:

"As soon as I have my wife I shall go to work again joyfully. Restore
me to my art! You shall see that I am attached to no home, but I cling
to this poor, good, faithful woman, for whom I have provided little but
grief, who is serious, solicitous, and without expectation, and who
nevertheless feels eternally chained to this unruly devil that I am.
Restore her to me! Thus will you do me all the good that you could ever
wish me; and see, for this I shall be grateful to you! yes,
grateful!... See that she is made happy and can soon return to me!
which, alas! in our sweet nineteenth-century language, means, send her
as much money as you possibly can! Yes, that is the kind of a man I am!
I can beg, I could steal, to make my wife happy, if only for a short
time. You dear, good Liszt! do see what you can do! Help me! Help me,
dear Liszt!"

At last she came, and he wrote Heine a letter of rejoicing. But once
with him, she began again her opposition to his high-flying theories.
She wanted him to write a popular French opera for Paris. She was
humiliated at his borrowing for his self-support, and could not see
much glory in his creed: "He who helps me only helps my art through me,
and the sacred cause for which I am fighting." He seemed more than
afraid of her opinion, and wrote to Uhlig:

"She is really somewhat hectoring in this matter, and I shall no doubt
have a hard tussle with her practical sense if I tell her bluntly that
I do not wish to write an opera for Paris. True, she would shake her
head and accept that decision, too, were it not so closely related to
our means of subsistence; there lies the critical knot, which it will
be painful to cut. Already my wife is ashamed of our presence in
Zurich, and thinks we ought to make everybody believe that we are in
Paris."

At last, she nagged him into her theory, although he fairly loathed
writing a pot-boiler, and considered it the purest dishonesty. He went
to Paris, but returned, having been able to accomplish nothing. On his
return, he wrote in his "A Communication to My Friends," that a new
hope sprung up within him. His friend Liszt was then directing the
opera at Weimar.

"At the close of my last Paris sojourn, when I was ill, unhappy, and in
despair, my eye fell on the score of my 'Lohengrin,' which I had almost
forgotten. A pitiful feeling overcame me that these tones