The following summer the Tsarina and her daughter came again to Kissingen; there again the King met them. The mutual amiabilities and civilities recommenced, and the Empress and the Bavarian Ministers still seemed eager to have the connection brought about. The announcement of the engagement was expected every day. But it was expected in vain. The King hesitated to say the decisive word; as a matter of fact, he never said it. People tried to guess the reason. Some thought that the Tsarina's too great eagerness for the match had cooled his own ardour for it. Others thought that the beauty-loving youth had hesitated because he had discovered that the little Russian Princess had a higher heel on one foot than on the other. Hardly any one suspected the real reason. It must be sought in Ludwig's restless, undecided temperament, and in his inborn aversion to entering the married state. [3] CHAPTER V King Ludwig and Richard Wagner Richard Wagner, in the preface to his Niebelungenlied, asks the following question:--"Is the prince to be found who will make possible the representation of my work?" Ludwig of Bavaria read these lines as Crown Prince, and exclaimed, with enthusiasm: "When I am a King I will show the world how highly I prize his genius!" Hardly a month after his accession Ludwig sent his private secretary, Herr von Pfistermeister, to invite Wagner to Munich. The secretary sought Wagner first in Vienna; but the poet-musician had been obliged to flee the Austrian capital for some place where his pursuers could not reach him, having been threatened with arrest for debt. He was traced to some friends in Stuttgart. There the King's emissary delivered to him a photograph of Ludwig and a ring, set with a ruby, and informed him that, as the stone in the ring glowed, so his ruler burned with longing to behold him. On his sixteenth birthday the Crown Prince of Bavaria had been present at a representation of Lohengrin. This opera had made the deeper impression on him from the fact that the legend of the swan knights was connected with Hohenschwangau, which, as we know, had been from his childhood his favourite place of residence. During the years preceding his ascent of the throne his interest in the "musician of the future" increased. When visiting his aunt, the Duchess Ludovica, at Possenhofen, he had found Wagner's compositions on her pianoforte, and from this time forth he studied his works with zeal. Ludwig was not the possessor of any distinctly musical gifts. A musician who gave him lessons on the piano was even of opinion that he was wanting in ear; and Wagner's works probably attracted him more from their fantastic poetry than on account of their musical qualities.