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moment is evening, and the light beyond the horizon only provokes profound dis-ease.
    Below the Theatinerkirche, in the whitewashed crypt, stood the lead coffins of almost half of the Wittelsbachs, tarnished by time, each with its coronet or crown, coffins in all sizes, to match the age of any man; and in the midst of that shifting darkness stood the bright new sarcophagus of his father, surmounted by a crown. In the blue shadows the door of the church might open, the coffin might appear in the square, and Wagner might die before morning. The weight of his family there in their crypt seemed to stifle him.
    He closed the window, but he could not sleep. He had a white night, haunted by the closed doors of the kirche, by the thought of Wagner in his hotel, and by the “Ages of Man”, whose artist, like Wagner, was also a blond child of the sea with great searching eyes the colour of transparent nakedness. At last he slept a little while.
    At his hotel Wagner was no more easy. Within himself he was already a great man, but not yet to the world. Thus must a statue wait anxiously to be unveiled, as though it could have no reality until others saw it. The sculptor knows better. So should the artist, too. The statue is not the maker. The statue is the thing made. Only that deserves our fame.
    He wished that he were better dressed. It was difficult to carry matters off from time to time, and he had had fifty years to learn what the staff says in the pantry.
    Alone in his bedroom, he tried to face the matter out.It was a typical bedroom of the period, large, airy, high-ceilinged , but with wallpaper as maniacally fluctuant as an eye test for the colour-blind. He wondered about the sincerity of the King. The sincerity of princes can be as transient and as narrow as their intelligence. Still, the King was not yet twenty. It should not be difficult to dazzle him. He was still young enough to listen to the conjuror without watching his hands. If that were true, all would be well.
    There were three operas unperformed in his drawer and six unwritten in his head. It would be pleasant not to worry about money any more. He would have to be indulgent . He had much to be indulgent for. After all, it would only be a stop-gap measure. Genius takes the easiest way out, and the easiest way out is to be dishonest about trifles. He would do whatever was expected of him. The interest of royalty, like the attention of birds, could not be held for long. It dissipated at the first cracking of an incautious twig. He would need patience only for a while.
    He slept until wakened for his interview. At the Residenz he waited in the ante-room. The door was open, and he entered. In the room he saw two young men, for the King was with an aide-de-camp, Paul of Thurn and Taxis. In him, too, Ludwig had once hoped to find a true friend, but Wagner could not know that. Yet even so there was a togetherness about the two young men that did not belong to men, in Wagner’s opinion, but only to men accompanied by women. It was a peep into a world he was not meant to see, as a man leaning over a staircase in a country house he has visited before, sees far below him the mistress talking to the maid he had previously forgotten to tip. It worried him. So much depended on their meeting. To Wagner, Ludwig and Paul resembled those marvellous portraits by Philip OttoRünge in which the people are like dandified fruit. They seemed to stare at him with the same svelte, velvety, edible incuriosity. Ludwigmade a motion and Paul left the room.
    Suddenly self-conscious, Wagner advanced. There was no denying that the King was ravishingly beautiful, with a silvery androgynous charm, but it was a disturbing beauty. It consisted of something besides beauty that he did not know the name of, but which made him feel soiled and ashamed. Then the King smiled. It was a radiant smile. Suddenly Wagner felt that everything would be all right.
    Ludwig felt nothing of the sort. He had expected