Wagner appears to have stayed at Venice through the winter of 1858-59, going in the spring of 1859 to Lucerne. It was from this latter place he wrote to me that he meant to go to Paris.
Strange the fascination Paris possessed for Wagner! He always spoke against it, yet when his fortunes were at the lowest, it was towards Paris that he turned for succour. He has told me that he felt the French were in a manner gifted in art as no other European people; that they inherited a perception of the beautiful and sense of the delicate refinement to a degree beyond that of other nations, though he saw it in an artificiality which gave it an unsound basis. And thinking of Meyerbeer, he felt the French to be generous in their treatment of aliens. So, in the autumn of 1859, again he attempts the conquest of Paris. He wrote to me, asking for an introduction to certain friends who would assist him in securing the legal copyright of his compositions. I took steps to put him into communication with the desired advisers, and he then did his best to make friends in all directions. He became popular; gave musical parties, inviting art celebrities, beside musicians. Minna was with him. They brought some of the furniture and hangings from their Swiss chalet, and transformed the house of Octave Feuillet, which Richard Wagner had taken, into the same agreeable and pleasant abode as at Zurich. Of course there was the usual opposition party, and they made the most out of the upholstery, charging Wagner in the press with keeping his house like that of a _lorette_, and behaving altogether with the vanity and ostentation of an Eastern potentate.
“Look here,” said he to me, when I was with him in Paris, “now you know this furniture, and how carefully Minna has preserved it, and yet see how I am treated.” He was desirous of replying to the press notices, but I endeavoured to dissuade him. He went to the Rue Newton, a street situated on the left hand of the Champs Elysée, beyond the Rondpoint, because it was quieter than the Rue Martignan, and he had trees near him. The Rue Martignan was the first he went to on returning to Paris, and where I visited him. It was in the Rue Newton, however, that his reunions took place.