With this idea in my mind I informed Liszt of my purpose, and
offered the Weimar management to compose a score for Junger
Siegfried, which as yet was unwritten, in return for which I
would definitely accept their proposal to grant me a year's
salary of fifteen hundred marks. This they agreed to without
delay, and I took up my quarters in the attic-room evacuated the
previous year by Karl Ritter, where, with the aid of sulphur and
May-blossom, and in the highest spirits, I proposed to complete
the poem of Junger Siegfried, as already outlined in my original
design.

I must now give some account of the cordial relations which, ever
since my departure from Dresden, I had maintained with Theodor
Uhlig, the young musician of the Dresden orchestra, which I have
already described, and which by this time had developed into a
genuinely productive association. His independent and indeed
somewhat uncultivated disposition had been moulded into a warm,
almost boundless devotion to myself, inspired both by sympathy
for my fate and a thorough understanding of my works. He also had
been among the number of those who had visited Weimar to hear my
Lohengrin, and had sent me a very detailed account of the
performance. As Hartel, the music-dealer in Leipzig, had
willingly agreed to my request to publish Lohengrin on condition
that I should not demand any share in the profits, I entrusted
Uhlig with the preparation of the pianoforte arrangement. But it
was more the theoretical questions discussed in my works that
formed the chief link that bound us together by a serious
correspondence. The characteristic which especially touched me
about this man, whom from his training I could regard merely as
an instrumentalist, was that he had grasped with clear