dismissal. To this I received no answer, nor have I had one up to
the present day; but, on the other hand, in 1865, I was
astonished to see Dorn enter my house in Munich unannounced, and
when to his joy I recognised him, he stepped up to me with a
gesture which clearly showed his intention of embracing me.
Although I managed to evade this, yet I soon saw the difficulty
of preventing him from addressing me with the familiar form of
'thou,' as the attempt to do so would have necessitated
explanations that would have been a useless addition to all my
worries just then; for it was the time when my Tristan was being
produced.

Such a man was Heinrich Dorn. Although, after the failure of
three operas, he had retired in disgust from the theatre to
devote himself exclusively to the commercial side of music, yet
the success of his opera, Der Schoffe von Paris, in Riga helped
him back to a permanent place among the dramatic musicians of
Germany. But to this position he was first dragged from
obscurity, across the bridge of infidelity to his friend, and by
the aid of virtue in the person of Director Holtei, thanks to a
magnanimous oversight on the part of Franz Listz. The preference
of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. for church scenes contributed to
secure him eventually his important position at the greatest
lyric theatre in Germany, the Royal Opera of Berlin. For he was
prompted far less by his devotion to the dramatic muse than by
his desire to secure a good position in some important German
city, when, as already hinted, through Liszt's recommendation he
was appointed musical director of Cologne Cathedral. During a
fete connected with the building of the cathedral he managed, as
a musician, so to work upon the Prussian monarch's religious