d seek safety in flight.

Three of the leaders of the insurrection--Roeckel, Bakunin, and Heubner;
personal friends of Wagner--were captured and imprisoned; he himself was
so lucky as to escape to Weimar, where Franz Liszt took care of him. It
so happened that Liszt, who had given up his career as concert pianist
(though all the world was clamoring to hear him), and was conducting the
Weimar Opera, had been preparing a performance of "Tannhaeuser," to which
Wagner would, under normal conditions, have been invited as a matter of
course. He was now there, but as a political fugitive, wherefore it was
not deemed advisable to have him attend the public performance; but he
did secretly witness a rehearsal, and was delighted to find that Liszt's
genius had enabled him to penetrate into the innermost recesses of this
music. It was impossible, however, for him to stay any longer. The
Dresden police had issued a warrant for the arrest of "the royal
Kapellmeister Richard Wagner," who was to be "placed on trial for active
participation in the riots which have taken place here." No time was,
therefore, to be lost. Late in the evening of May 18, Liszt's noble
patroness, the Princess Wittgenstein, received this note from him: "Can
you give the bearer sixty thalers? Wagner is obliged to fly, and I
cannot help him at this moment."

Early the next morning Wagner, provided with a false pass, left Weimar
and headed for Switzerland, which was to be his home for the greater
part of the following twelve years of his exile from Germany. Had he
been caught, like his friends, and, like them, imprisoned during these
years, it is not likely that the world would now possess those seven
monuments of his ripest genius, "Rheingold," "Die Walkuere," "Siegfried,"
"Goetterdaemmerung," "Tristan and Isolde," "Die Meistersinger," and
"Parsifal." Even as it was, the world has undoubtedly lost an immortal
opera or two through his unfortunate participation in the rebellion. For
during the first four years of his exile, he did not compose any music.
He reasoned that he had written four good operas and nobody seemed to
want them; why, therefore, should he compose any more?

At the same time, he realized that there were natural reasons why his
operas were not understood. They were written in such a novel style,
both vocal and instrumental, that the singers, players, and conductors
found it difficult to perform them correctly, the consequence being that
they di