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Among the four there were two pairs of likenesses. Liszt was gray; but, although Frau Cosima's hair was blonde, and her face smooth and fair as compared with her father's, which was furrowed with age and boldly aquiline, she was his child in every lineament.
When I asked him about it, and learned that the lady in question was also a friend of Cosima's, I expressed my surprise at his not introducing me. He continued to evade this suggestion with singularly vague phrases, and when I ventured to tease him by the supposition of a love-affair, he said there could be no question of such a thing, as the lady was old.
Yet it is but just that we should pay at least a passing salute to this woman who was the love of Wagner's youth and the drudge of his middle life, and who, from the distance of her lonely separation, saw him basking in the favor of the king, who, too late for her, had become his munificent patron. What a contrast between her fate and Cosima's!
"I often used to wait for him at the Hotel Imperial; and on this occasion I made the acquaintance of the manager of the hotel, who promised that he would interest himself on my behalf. Who was more delighted than I when he told me that on the following Saturday afternoon, 11 December, I was to come and find him, so that he could introduce me to Mme. Cosima's maid and Richard Wagner's valet!
"He fell back into the arms of death as into those of a guardian angel, for whom he had been waiting a long time. There was no struggle; without a distaste for life, he seemed, nevertheless, to have aspired ardently toward eternity." With a pretty touch Liszt gives an idea of Cosima's interest in others.
But Cosima's excellent health and high spirits dispelled all anxious thought for the present. We drove out again in a splendid carriage, and in the most extravagant of good humours, through the avenues of the Tiergarten, dined to our hearts' content at the Hotel de Russie, and made up our minds that bad times had fled for ever. For the immediate present my plans were directed towards Vienna.
While I was singing 'Wotan's Abschied' to my friends I noticed the same expression on Cosima's face as I had seen on it, to my astonishment, in Zurich on a similar occasion, only the ecstasy of it was transfigured into something higher.
We were first of all rejoiced to find Cosima's state of health much less alarming than we I in particular had known it to be before. She had been ordered a sour-milk cure, and we went to look on the next morning when she took her walk to the institution.
She, the daughter of Liszt, was but twenty five, of deeply artistic temperament, and could understand the aims of the composer as no other woman had yet done. This ardent attraction led later to Cosima's separation from her husband and finally to her marriage with Wagner. The first of the Wagner Festivals under patronage of the King, took place in Munich June 10, 13, 19, and July 1, 1865.
I grew alarmed, and hurriedly went to another table in the hope of counteracting the effect of Cosima's unguided and misguided efforts. In this very economical pursuit luck befriended me so substantially, that I at once recovered the ten louis d'or which my fair friend had lost at the other table. This soon put us into a very merry mood.
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