my cold baths, and plagued my wife to death by making her show me
my way out with a lantern for the prescribed early morning walk.

I was in this state when the printed copies of Oper und Drama
reached me, and I devoured rather than read them with an
eccentric joy. I think that the delightful consciousness of now
being able to say to myself, and prove to the satisfaction of
everybody, and even of Minna, that I had at last completely freed
myself from my hateful career as conductor and opera composer,
brought about this immoderate excitement. Nobody had a right to
make the demands upon me which two years ago had made me so
miserable. The income which the Ritters had assured me for life,
and the object of which was to give me an absolutely free hand,
also contributed to my present state of mind, and made me feel
confidence in everything I undertook. Although my plans for the
present seemed to exclude all possibility of being realised,
thanks to the indifference of an inartistic public, still I could
not help inwardly cherishing the idea that I should not be for
ever addressing only the paper on which I wrote. I anticipated
that before long a great reaction would set in with regard to the
public and everything connected with our social life, and I
believed that in my boldly planned work there lay just the right
material to supply the changed conditions and real needs of the
new public whose relation to art would be completely altered with
what was required. As these bold expectations had arisen in my
mind in consequence of my observations of the state of society in
general, I naturally could not say much about them to my friends.
I had not mistaken the significance of the general collapse of
the political movements, but felt that their real weakness lay in
the inadequate though sincere expression of their cause, and that