At table, Wagner told us about a very interesting French leaflet which he had once read in Paris, and which he had never been able to find again. It was a history of Bluebeard, with the traditional slaying of his wives and the forbidden chamber; but in this account the last-threatened victim was not saved in the usual way, by her brothers. No less a person than Jeanne d'Arc came to deliver her and punish the criminal.
"I remember," said the Master, "that there were illustrations. As a matter of fact, it was a cheap edition, printed in two columns. I have no idea how this pamphlet came into my hands, nor how it was lost, but I have never forgotten it. That bringing together of Jeanne d'Arc and Bluebeard impressed me very much. The monstrous Gilles de Retz, who may have served as a model for the legendary type of Bluebeard, was a contemporary of _La Pucelle_, and the hypothesis of that heroine's coming to the aid of innocence and chastising the guilty is very curious. I should be glad if I could find that funny little leaflet again."
(Alas! it was not to be found, in spite of all researches.)
Toward the middle of the dinner, Wagner, who had been silent for a little time, asked our permission to go and note down an idea which had crossed his mind, and which he feared he might forget, _à propos_ of the study of Beethoven upon which he was then at work.
He went up to his bedroom to write these few sentences, and I concluded from that fact that the Master did not write his volumes of prose in the same holy place where he composed his music.
In the "gallery," beside the marble statue of Tristan, stood a photograph framed in velvet which reproduced the features of a handsome, athletic young man, with an intensely ardent expression. I was very curious about this portrait, which always attracted my attention and held it irresistibly. One day I questioned the Master.
I saw him grow pale; his eyes filled with tears, and with a repressed sigh, he murmured,
Madam Cosima signed to me not to say anything more, and as soon as it was possible, she told me all about it.
"It is a photograph of Schnorr von Karolsfeld, 'the hero of song,' as Wagner called him--suddenly cut off by Death in the very fulness of triumphant life. Five years have passed since then, but the Master cannot console himself for the loss of this friend, this disciple, this marvellous interpreter of his work. He never thinks of him without a pang and, above all, he dreads to speak of him."