"My portrait! You could find time for that?"
"I could do it at once, I beg you to allow me to do it."
O, careless youth! Many times Lenbach spoke again of this portrait, but the idea of posing wearied me and I evaded the appointments. The poignant regret that I now feel is surely a sufficient punishment.
XIII
The rehearsals of the Rheingold with orchestra had commenced! Wagner had made it a point that his friends should be allowed to be present at the last one before the dress rehearsal. This prospect filled us with joy.
Richter, however, seemed to be anxious. Could anything be going wrong? The singers were of the first rank and full of enthusiasm, the members of the orchestra were, without a doubt, the best in the world,—but there was also the management of the theatre, which laboured secretly at the staging of the work. What would this staging be like, without the suggestions of the Master, carried on by a management that was hostile to him, and looking out only for itself? Incredible as it may appear, it is true that the men who directed and managed the theatre, to which Wagner brought glory and profit, were hostile to Wagner.
And yet the manager, Perfall, had been appointed solely at the recommendation of the Master, whom he had solicited with a servile insistence, swearing that he would have no other object except to devote himself to him and to his interests, with all his heart and all his ability. As soon as he was appointed, with an unparalleled treachery, he had betrayed the one to whom he owed his position, and hindered in a thousand ways the production of the Meistersinger.
Nor could one depend very much more upon the Court Counsellor, Lorenz von Düfflipp, intermediary between the Palace and the theatre, who, in spite of his obsequious flatteries of Wagner, was secretly adverse to him, and hand in hand with the management.
Fruitless reprisals indeed, but we called him "Tartufflipp,"[1] and his title of "Hofrath" changed itself for us into "Chaussetrappe."[2]