122.
As usual, dearest friend, you have had an excellent idea. It is settled then that we go to Paris, and there have a meeting at the end of September, after the Carlsruhe performances. As before then your chief purpose is to see the Mediterranean, I advise you to go to Genoa and Marseilles, and thence to Paris. Napoleon says, "La Mediterranee est un lac francais," so you may go from your Swiss lakes to the French lake for a few weeks and then come to me in Paris.
By the middle of October I must be back at Weymar, but a fortnight of Paris will be quite enough for us.
Therefore this is settled.
T. will be very welcome at Weymar. He wrote to me once or twice before, and, between ourselves, I have heard several things about him which make me think that his character is not oversolid. But that does not matter, and may be left to Meser. A few days ago I received a letter from Berlioz, in answer to my last, in which I had said several things about you.
I quote the following lines:—
"Our art, as we understand it, is an art of millionaires; it requires millions. As soon as these millions are found every difficulty disappears; every dark intellect is illumined; moles and foxes are driven back into the earth; the marble block becomes a god, and the public human: without these millions we remain clodhoppers after thirty years' exertion.
"And yet there is not a sovereign, not a Rothschild, who will understand this. Is it not possible that, after all, we, with our secret pretensions, should simply be stupid and insolent fools?
"I am, like yourself, convinced of the ease with which Wagner and I should fit each other if only he would grease his wheels a little. As to the few lines of which you speak, I have never read them, and therefore feel not the slightest resentment on their account. I have fired too many pistol-shots at the legs of passers-by to be astonished at receiving a few pellets myself."
In Paris we shall continue the subject; material and good fun will not be wanting.