II
Parsifal having proved a tremendous success, Wagner went to work to arrange for another festival. He had still a thousand opera plans bubbling in his brain; doubtless, with his unconquerable vitality, he imagined he had twenty years of life before him; he meant to make a financial success of Bayreuth and to go on. The end came with awful unexpectedness. He went to Venice, conducted there his boyish Symphony in C, worked away at his Parsifal arrangements; his heart ruptured and he died on February 13, 1883. He had lived the perfectly rounded life, achieved the three-score-and-ten, done everything that a man can do, and gone through more experiences than most men suffer. His death sent a shudder through Europe: one had come to think that such a man could not possibly die. Swinburne wrote that we heard the news as "a prophet who hears the word of God and may not flee." His vilest detractors laid their homage at the dead man's feet. His widow laid her hair by his head. He was buried at his Villa Wahnfried, and rests there for ever. Had ever such a life so perfectly beautiful an ending? We must regard Parsifal as the last sad quaverings of a beloved friend: after that came peace, immortal peace.