ffair, only recently made public. The
translation is from the _Musical Courier._ Whatever is discarded, there
remains enough to disprove Belart's statement that Otto Wesendonck only
learned of the affair from informants outside, and, finding Wagner and
Mathilde together, compelled Wagner to leave Zurich immediately.
Besides, even Belart admits that Wesendonck and his wife continued to
live together for the sake of the children, and that years after, when
he had learned to understand, he renewed his acquaintance with Wagner.

Amazing as this story is, both with regard to the strange things it
asks us to believe of the man and the woman and the husband, it is
certain that there was a pretty how-d'ye-do in Zurich. Minna became so
jealous that she drove Wagner, usually so tender in his allusions to
her, to use the expression of the ungallant Haydn, saying that, "she
was making a hell out of the home." Her outbursts of temper were so
violent, and her addiction to opium had become so great, that he began
to fear for her death by heart disease, and finally for her sanity. He
wrote of her to his friend Frau Ritter:

"Her condition of mind became such a torment to herself and her
surroundings, that a radical change of the situation had to be made,
unless we were all willing to wear ourselves out unreasonably.... The
state of her education, and her intellectual capacities, make it
impossible for her to find in me and my endowments the consolation
which she needed so much by way of compensation for the
disagreeableness of our material situation. If this is the source of
great anguish to me, it nevertheless makes me pity her with all my
heart, and it is my most cordial wish that I may some day be able to
afford her lasting consolation in her own way."

In 1856 she had left him for a time, ostensibly to take a cure. In 1859
there had been a short reunion, of which Wagner wrote again to Frau
Ritter:

"This period I have also chosen for a reunion with my poor wife. May
Heaven grant that I shall always feel able to carry out patiently my
firm and cordial determination of treating her in the most considerate
manner. I confess that my relation to this poor woman, who had so many
trials, and is now suffering so much, has always spurred me on to
preserve and develop my moral powers. In all my relations to her I am
guided only by the deepest pity with her condition, and I hope
confidently that it will always arm me with the persistent p