[88] One gathers from other sources that she had also got an inkling of the state of affairs in Bordeaux.
[89] Mein Leben, p. 519.
[90] Letter of March 17, 1850, to Minna.
[91] Mein Leben, p. 518.
[92] In the passage just quoted from Mein Leben he says he returned "towards the end of April." This is demonstrably a slip of the pen for either "the end of March" or "the beginning of April." The true dates are clearly established by letters to Minna and to Liszt, and indeed by Wagner's own remarks, on the next page of Mein Leben, that "towards the middle of April" he left Paris for Montmorency.
[93] Mein Leben, pp. 519, 520.
[94] It may be argued that Wagner wrote two letters about this time, that it was in the second of these that he told Minna of his impending separation from her, and that this letter has been lost. This theory, however, is put out of court by the passage last quoted from Mein Leben. The "long and detailed letter" in which he retraced their married life is clearly that of the 17th April. It is significant that the letter of 17th April, as printed, terminates with the utmost abruptness and bears no signature. Has the ending been lost or suppressed?
[95] The letters to Minna were given to the world in two volumes in 1908, without any editor's name, and without a preface or a single explanatory note. It appears, however, from the publisher's preliminary announcement, that the editing was done by Baron Hans von Wolzogen.
[96] It is not improbable that he was deliberately trying to minimise the importance of the matter.
[97] "Durch meine nächste Umgebung." In the English version of the Wagner-Liszt letters this is rendered "by my immediate surroundings." Apparently Minna is meant.