On the 10th of December the master left Munich. Despite the cold of winter and the dark early morning hour, the railway station was filled with people anxious to see him and bid him good-bye. Ludwig had sent him a last farewell letter, brimming over with sorrow:
“My precious tenderly loved Friend,
“Words cannot express the pain gnawing at my heart. Whatever it is possible to do to refute the abominable newspaper accounts shall be done. That it should have come to this! Our ideals shall be faithfully cultivated—I need hardly tell you this. Let us write often and much to one another. I ask it of you! We know each other, and we will not give up the friendship which binds us. For the sake of your peace I had to act as I have done.
“Do not misjudge me, not for a moment; it would be the pangs of hell to me.... Success to my most beloved friend! May his works flourish. A hearty greeting with my whole soul from
“Your faithful,
“Ludwig.”
Wagner went to Switzerland and took up his abode there.
Neither the King nor his advisers thought that the banishment would be for ever. The poet-musician did, indeed, return to Munich, on visits of short duration, but he never stayed there again for any length of time. The good relations between him and Ludwig were never broken, and the gallant Monarch continued to hold his protecting hand over him. He worked zealously for the inauguration of the Wagner Theatre at Bayreuth, and the royal pension was paid without reduction out of the privy purse until the death of Wagner in 1883. Frau Cosima, however, who had been one of the causes of the friends’ separation, was unable to congratulate herself on any favour whatsoever; she might not have existed as far as the ruler of Bavaria was concerned. As a widow she sought an audience of him, to thank him for the proofs of affection he had shown her husband. Ludwig refused to receive her. “I do not know any Frau Cosima Wagner,” he said coldly.
Although he had voluntarily sent the master away, and although, as we have seen, other reasons than the voice of opinion had influenced his decision, Ludwig never forgave the citizens of Munich for the part they had taken in disturbing a friendship which had been the source to him of so much consolation and pleasure. The aversion which he showed the capital on many later occasions was first awakened by this circumstance. The severance not only left behind it a profound feeling of loneliness, but also, in his sensitive heart, a bitterness which boded ill for the future.
“His too great love for me,” wrote Wagner, on the 26th of December 1865, to Frau Wille, “made him blind to other connections, and therefore he was easily disappointed. He knows nobody, and it is only now that he is learning to know people. Still I hope for him. As I am sure of his enduring affection, so I believe in the development of his splendid qualities. All he requires is to learn to know a few more people. He will then rapidly learn to do the right thing.”