XXV
One day I had been invited to Tribschen for the two o'clock dinner. Over the lake, as usual, a boatman rowed me to the point of the promontory, and I passed through the garden and up to the house without meeting anyone. The French windows of the drawing-room were wide-open, and as I reached the threshold I heard soft harmonies that came from the little sanctuary where the Master worked. Hardly daring to breathe, I slipped into the nearest chair. I was greatly moved, troubled, even frightened, for was it not a presumption, almost a sacrilege, to surprise in this way the sacred mystery? Yet, what rare good fortune was mine, to hear Wagner composing! Perfectly quiet, hardly moving an eyelash, I listened intently. Incomparably sweet appeared to me the sounds I heard. A very slow progression of chords, which seemed to be drawn from a harp rather than a piano: a strange, remote harmony, mysterious and supernatural. I discovered, later, that it was the first sketch of the Invocation to Erda by Wotan, in the Third Act of Siegfried, where the goddess ascends from the depths of the earth, with closed eyes and draperies wet with dew....
After a few moments, silence fell, and Wagner soon appeared between the silken folds of the parted curtains.
His face, with its aureole of silvered hair, was calm, and still more luminous than usual were the rays that beamed from his large eyes.
He saw me sitting rigid on my chair.
"Ah!" he said, "are you there? As quiet as an image! I have not heard a sound."
"Imagine, then, O Master, what terror and what ecstasy I have felt, to surprise Deity in the act of creating."
"I have told you before that you must not be so enthusiastic," he exclaimed laughingly. "It is bad for the health."
"Oh! no; on the contrary, it makes one doubly alive."