“Good-bye! My gathering tears would make me write words that would grieve you yet more. Again, good-bye!”
“3rd March 1863.—Your suppositions with regard to my depression are fortunately wrong; Louis has certainly worried me terribly, but I have forgiven him; he has found a ship and is now in Mexico.
“No; my trouble was Love. A love unsought that met me smiling, that I did not seek, that I even fought against for awhile.
“But my loneliness, my unceasing yearning for affection, conquered me; first I let myself be loved, then I more than loved in return, and at last a separation became inevitable—a separation absolute as death. That is all. I am slowly recovering, but health such as this is sad. I will say no more....
“I am glad my Beatrice pleases you. I am going to Weimar, where it is now in rehearsal, to conduct a few performances in April, then I shall come back to this wilderness—Paris.
“Pray, dear friend, that my apathy may become complete, for otherwise I shall have a hard time while The Trojans is in rehearsal.
“Good-bye; when I see your dear writing on my desk it calms me for the day. Never forget that.”
XXXV
THE TROJANS
By this time (1863) I had finished the dramatic work on which I had been engaged. Four years earlier, being in Weimar with Liszt’s devoted friend, the Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein—a woman whose noble heart and mind had often been my comfort in my darkest hours—I was drawn on to speak of my love of Virgil and of my wish to compose a grand opera in Shakespearian style on the second and fourth books of the Æneid. I added that I knew too well the misery and worry that would be my fate to dare to embark on such a project.
Said the Princess: