"It was not a question of physical fatigue—Schnorr did not experience any: but to live Tristan, to burn with his passions, to suffer his agonies, to thrill with his ecstasies, to die his death!—such superhuman exaltation, such emotion and fever of the soul, all this the Master could not permit again. So the success was interrupted, the big receipts were cut off, for such secondary considerations as these did not concern those generous minds for an instant.
"Then a very great project began to take shape in Wagner's brain.
"'With the certainty of the unspeakable importance of Schnorr for my musical creations, a new springtide of hope entered into my life. The medium was at last found through which my creative power could link itself to the present. The moment was come in which to teach and to make clear. That which had been universally misunderstood, denounced as unplayable, mocked at, covered with contempt, was about to be proved an undeniable artistic reality. To create a German style for representing works of German genius—this was our watchword. And with this consoling hope I found it easier to oppose, for the time, any further productions of Tristan. This work and these representations were so different from the usual performances that they would necessitate too sudden a leap into the unknown; the precipices and chasms yawning before it must be approached deliberately. We must begin by carefully roofing them over, by paving the way toward ourselves, the isolated artists, up to our summit, for those associates that were indispensable to us. So then, Schnorr being ours, it was determined to found a Royal College of Music and Dramatic Art.'
"Alas! how many obstacles, how many fresh struggles, and before the work could be achieved, how cruel the death that struck down the hero, in the fulness of youth, in the fulness of beauty!"
And now, when in the gallery I pass before the superb likeness of Schnorr von Karolsfeld, I in my turn feel my heart contract, and I stifle a cry of anger, of revolt, against so blind and imbecile a destiny.
XXVIII
To-day it happened that when we entered the drawing-room at Tribschen we found our host there entertaining strangers, visitors! A gentleman and a lady, both very small in figure and rather dull in aspect, were sitting with an air of constraint, only one of them speaking.
The Master presented them.
"His Excellency The Counsellor Isérof and Madame Isérof, who have come from Russia to see me."