Notwithstanding the unalterable affection of King Louis II. he was, at the time I saw him, morally exiled from Bavaria. His long-cherished project of a theatre, the plans of which were already drawn by the great architect, Semper, and which the king wished to have erected in Munich, nearly revolutionized the city. The project was relinquished and the plaster model of the building was sorrowfully banished to an attic in the palace. But Wagner had not ceased to think of it, and who knows if at this moment Paris was not the aim of his dreams? He was then working upon the third part of the Nibelungen, Siegfried. I saw the manuscript on his study piano, in a little apartment adjoining the drawing-room. There was a portrait of his noble friend, handsome as a hero of the Edda. I was told that he sometimes escaped from Munich to pass a few days at Tribscheu, and that in this same room a bed was arranged for him. There is nothing more touching than the enthusiastic affection with which this young king was inspired by the man of genius. He came to him like a saving angel at the moment when all abandoned him. "What shall I say to you," wrote Wagner to a friend, some time after his first interview with the king; "the most incomprehensible thing, and the only one, moreover, which could save me, is completely realized. In the very year of my first representation of Tanhäuser, a queen brought into this world the good genius of my life, him who was destined later, in the depth of my distress, to give me safety and consolation. It seems as if he had been sent me from heaven." The king was obliged, however, to do battle for his great friend, for the entire court was hostile to him, and the struggle was not without danger for the newly-crowned youth. But nothing could change his heart. The world in general revenged itself upon him by inventing various legends more or less absurd and unworthy of his notice. His only peculiarity lies in his deep intelligence, and his preference for masterpieces over the frivolous and commonplace pleasures of the world.