Though up till the beginning of the year 1880 he did not cease to give some attention to state affairs, the king's interests lay in quite other spheres. His personal idiosyncrasies had, in fact, developed meanwhile in a most unhappy direction. His enthusiasm for all that is beautiful soon led him into dangerous bypaths. It found its most innocent expression in the earliest years of his reign when he formed an intimate friendship with Richard Wagner, whom from May 1864 to December 1865 he had constantly in his company. Louis was entirely possessed by the soaring ideas of the master, and was energetic in their realization. He not only established Wagner's material position at the moment by paying 18,000 gulden of debts for him and granting him a yearly income of 4000 gulden (afterwards increased to 8000), but he also proceeded to realize the ambitious artistic plans of the master. A series of brilliant model performances of the Wagnerian music-dramas was instituted in Munich under the personal patronage of the king, and when the further plan of erecting a great festival theatre in Munich for the performance of Wagner's "music of the future" broke down in the face of the passive resistance of the local circles interested, the royal enthusiast conceived the idea of building at Bayreuth, according to Wagner's new principles, a theatre worthy of the music-dramas. For a time Louis was entirely under Wagner's influence, the fantastic tendencies of whose art cast a spell over him, and there is extant a series of emotional letters of the king to Wagner. Wagner, on the whole, used his influence in artistic and not in political affairs.[1] In spite of this the opposition to him became permanent. Public opinion in Bavaria for the most part turned against him. He was attacked for his foreign origin, his extravagance, his intrigues, his artistic utopias, and last but by no means least, for his unwholesome influence over the king. Louis in the end was compelled to give him up. But the relations between king and artist were by no means at an end. In face of the war which was imminent in 1866, and in the midst of the preparation for war, the king hastened in May to Triebschen, near Lucerne, in order to see Wagner again.[2] In 1868 they were seen together in public for the last time at the festival performances in Munich. In 1876 Wagner's _Ring des Nibelungen_ was performed for the first time at Bayreuth in the presence of the king. Later, in 1881, the king formed a similar friendship with Joseph Kainz the actor, but it soon came to an end. In January 1867 the young king became betrothed to Duchess Sophie of Bavaria (afterwards Duchesse d'Alençon), daughter of Duke Max and sister of the empress of Austria; but the betrothal was dissolved in October of the same year.