opera. It was with sincere grief that I accompanied him to the
mail-coach, and he too seemed to be seized with sudden
foreboding. As a matter of fact, this was the last time we ever
met.

But for the present we carried on an active correspondence, and
as his communications were always pleasant and entertaining, and
for a long time constituted almost my sole link with the outside
world, I begged him to write me long letters as often as
possible. As postage was expensive at that time, and voluminous
letters touched our pockets severely, Uhlig conceived the
ingenious idea of using the parcel post for our correspondence.
As only packets of a certain weight might be sent in this way, a
German translation of Beaumarchais' Figaro, of which Uhlig
possessed an ancient copy, enjoyed the singular destiny of acting
as ballast for our letters to and fro. Every time, therefore,
that our epistles had swelled, to the requisite length, we
announced them with the words: 'Figaro brings tidings to-day.'

Uhlig meanwhile found much pleasure in the Mittheilung an meine
Freunde ('A Communication to my Friends'), which, immediately
after our separation, I wrote as a preface to an edition of my
three operas, the Fliegender Hollander, Tannhauser, and
Lohengrin. He was also amused to hear that Hartel, who had
accepted the book for publication on payment of ten louis d'or,
protested so vigorously against certain passages in this preface,
which wounded his orthodoxy and political feelings, that I
thought seriously of giving the book to another firm. However, he
finally persuaded me to give way, and I pacified his tender
conscience by a few trifling alterations.