sister, but my creative instincts, which had long lain dormant,
were stimulated afresh by the society of my brilliant and learned
brother-in-law. It was brought home to me, without in any way
hurting my feelings, that my early marriage, excusable as it may
have been, was yet an error to be retrieved, and my mind regained
sufficient elasticity to compose some sketches, designed this
time not merely to meet the requirements of the theatre as I knew
it. During the last wretched days I had spent with Minna at
Blasewitz, I had read Bulwer Lytton's novel, Rienzi; during my
convalescence in the bosom of my sympathetic family, I now worked
out the scheme for a grand opera under the inspiration of this
book. Though obliged for the present to return to the limitations
of a small theatre, I tried from this time onwards to aim at
enlarging my sphere of action. I sent my overture, Rule
Britannia, to the Philharmonic Society in London, and tried to
get into communication with Scribe in Paris about a setting for
H. Konig's novel, Die Hohe Braut, which I had sketched out.

Thus I spent the remainder of this summer of ever-happy memory.
At the end of August I had to leave for Riga to take up my new
appointment. Although I knew that my sister Rosalie had shortly
before married the man of her choice, Professor Oswald Marbach of
Leipzig, I avoided that city, probably with the foolish notion of
sparing myself any humiliation, and went straight to Berlin,
where I had to receive certain additional instructions from my
future director, and also to obtain my passport. There I met a
younger sister of Minna's, Amalie Planer, a singer with a pretty
voice, who had joined our opera company at Magdeburg for a short
time. My report of Minna quite overwhelmed this exceedingly kind-
hearted girl. We went to a performance of Fidelia together,