After we were all reunited in our usual place at the Café Maximilian, the conference was not a long one. Richter had had a stormy interview with Perfall.
"Postpone the representation," said Richter.
"The representation will take place on Sunday," replied Perfall.
"And he _will see_," added Richter. "My resolution is taken, but I did not wish to announce it before asking Wagner's advice. Quick. Let us get to business!"
He wrote a dispatch in German, and we wrote the following in French:
"Master, the orchestra, under the direction of Hans Richter, was admirable. The singers deserve the highest praise. The scenery and the stage mechanism are absurd, ridiculous, impossible." And, while someone hurried off with the telegrams, I wrote a long letter to Wagner, giving him a detailed account of the spectacle at which we had just been present and concerning which we were still trembling with indignation.
Betz also wrote to the Master, who would receive the dispatches the same evening and the letters the following morning.
We awaited the replies in the greatest impatience.
The first telegram which arrived the next day was for Richter:
"Will they really offer me such an insult as to give my work to-morrow?"
At the theatre the _Rheingold_ was still announced. Richter showed Wagner's dispatch to Perfall, but he paid no attention to it, and persisted in his determination to give the work upon the date for which it was billed.
I received a letter from Tribschen in which Wagner said that he thanked me for the vivid description I had sent him of this disaster, that he had telegraphed to the King asking him to suspend the representations, that he had telegraphed to Betz begging him to refuse to sing under such conditions.
On Sunday morning Richter went for a last time to see the Director, and said to him:
"The representation of the _Rheingold_ will not take place this evening, because I will not conduct the work against the wish of its author."
"You will not conduct it this evening, nor any other evening," cried Perfall--"as you are no longer Capellmeister to the Royal Theatre."
And pale with rage, he signed the dismissal of Hans Richter.
But at least they could not play the _Rheingold_ that evening. Better that the sea should swallow one man than the whole ship.