13 ROSENGASSE, FRANKFURT, TUESDAY MORNING, AUGUST 1872.

. . . Last night I was at the theatre and heard DIE JUDIN (LA
JUIVE), and was thereby terribly excited. At last, in the middle
of the fifth act, which was perfectly beastly, I had to slope. I
could stand even seeing the cauldron with the sham fire beneath,
and the two hateful executioners in red; but when at last the
girl's courage breaks down, and, grasping her father's arm, she
cries out - O so shudderfully! - I thought it high time to be out
of that GALERE, and so I do not know yet whether it ends well or
ill; but if I ever afterwards find that they do carry things to the
extremity, I shall think more meanly of my species. It was raining
and cold outside, so I went into a BIERHALLE, and sat and brooded
over a SCHNITT (half-glass) for nearly an hour. An opera is far
more REAL than real life to me. It seems as if stage illusion, and
particularly this hardest to swallow and most conventional illusion
of them all - an opera - would never stale upon me. I wish that
life was an opera. I should like to LIVE in one; but I don't know
in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted.
Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer
cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of
your dirty clothes in a sustained and FLOURISHOUS aria.

I am in a right good mood this morning to sit here and write to
you; but not to give you news. There is a great stir of life, in a
quiet, almost country fashion, all about us here. Some one is
hammering a beef-steak in the REZ-DE-CHAUSSEE: there is a great
clink of pitchers and noise of the pump-handle at the public well