ABSTRACT
Between completion of the Rheingold orchestration and commencement of the music for Die Walkure a month elapses. In this chapter, the author proposes to take advantage of that interval for an excursion beyond the walls of Zurich, since two outside events of some importance are foreshadowed in a letter reaching Richard Wagner just as his Gods are constructing their rainbow-bridge. If Wagner had begun to criticise the first instalment, he would have found enough to occupy him; an absolute zareba. Some sense of humour, so woefully deficient at the Altenburg, would have saved the princess from bracketing Wagner's "sad and noble hero" with an intentional lampoon on the unscrupulous place-hunter. When Wagner passed through Weimar, on his flight from Germany, there had been more than some talk of a speedy production of the Hollander in that city.
