[126] Mein Leben, pp. 157, 158.
[127] Cornelius, Ausgewählte Briefe, i. 698.
[128] Mein Leben, p. 158.
[129] He pleads guilty more than once to an offensive manner of speech when he was angry. We can dimly imagine what he was like in moments such as these. Hornstein, Nietzsche, and others had experience of it. Nietzsche's account of his scene with Wagner has become classical. See Daniel Halévy's Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, Eng. trans., p. 167.
[130] Mein Leben, p. 166.
[131] It must be remembered, however, that we have only his account of all this. It is just possible that the accounts of the other actors in the episode might have given it a slightly different colour here and there.
[132] Printed for the first time in Julius Kapp's Richard Wagner und die Frauen, p. 143.
[133] Minna's letters of 28th October and 17th November 1840, in Richard Wagner an Theodor Apel, pp. 80-87.
[134] See Mein Leben, pp. 212, 213, 232. His feeling towards her seems to have hardened during their later residence in Dresden. In the first sketch of the Flying Dutchman he gave the name of Minna to the redeeming heroine; and as late as 1845 he could speak warmly of her to Hanslick. When the latter praised Minna's good looks, Wagner said, "Ah, you can scarcely recognise her now. You should have seen her a few years ago. The poor woman has gone through much trouble and privation with me. In Paris we had a wretched time, and without Meyerbeer's help we might have starved" (Hanslick, Aus meinem Leben, i. 65, 66).
[135] Liszt also urged him to do this.